Avalanche Use Four-Goal Second Period to Beat Panthers 7-4

Success in Sunrise

The Avalanche beat the Panthers 7-4 on Saturday at Amerant Bank Arena to improve to 3-0 on this road trip and 12-9-0 on the season. Jonathan Drouin scored twice, Mikko Rantanen posted four points, and Valeri Nichushkin recorded three points.

"[We had a] real good defending commitment tonight," Avalanche Head Coach Jared Bednar said after the game. "It led to good offense. [We had] smart puck play. If we had a play, we tried to take advantage of it. If we didn't, we laid [the puck] back in behind and got our forecheck rolling. I felt like we were a hard team to handle tonight in a lot of different areas."

How It Happened

Florida's Carter Verhaeghe opened the scoring at 52 seconds of the first period with a right-circle wrist shot.

Drouin scored his first goal of the season to tie the game at 9:13 of the opening frame from the doorstep when he deflected the rebound from Cale Makar's shot past Panthers goalie Sergei Bobrovsky.

The Panthers took a 2-1 lead at 15:44 of the first period when Aleksander Barkov scored from the left doorstep.

Drouin netted his second of the night to level the score at two apiece at 34 seconds of the second period off a fabulous centering feed from Makar. With assists on the first two goals of the game, Makar recorded the 100th multi-point game of his career.

Colorado took a 3-2 lead when Oliver Kylington sent Logan O'Connor on a breakaway with a beautiful pass and O'Connor scored his second goal of the season at 4:04 of the middle frame.

"I saw [O'Connor] swinging," Kylington said. "And I just tried to hold on the puck as long as I could. I think maybe their [defenseman] went and changed and I think an opening was available for me there, and [O'Connor] made a great skate and a great lane and I just tried to find his tape."

Samuel Girard tallied his second goal of the season to double the Avs' lead at 8:54 of the middle frame when his left-point shot deflected off the skate of a Panthers defender and in.

The Burgundy and Blue took a 5-2 lead at 16:58 of the second frame when Mikko Rantanen scored his 14th goal of the season with a tap-in from the right doorstep off a great centering pass from Girard.

"I thought every guy on the ice on that particular play did the right thing," Bednar said. "[Devon Toews] drives [the puck] into the middle of the ice to get dangerous, they have to commit to him, then it's a good tape-to-tape forehand pass to [Girard] with good timing coming down the back door. And Mikko kind of just sits and sits at the net and beat his guy off the boards and got heavy low. And [Girard] makes a great pass and it ends up being a tap-in, but it's all the work that came before that builds that goal."

Florida got one back on the power play at 18:40 of the second period with a Sam Reinhart deflection on Aaron Ekblad's shot from the point.

The Panthers thought they scored another power-play goal at 4:17 of the third period but it was disallowed due to a goaltender interference call.

Kylington scored his first goal of the season to give the Avs a 6-3 lead at 15:49 of the third period with a wrist shot from the slot off a feed from Nichushkin.

Nichushkin scored his first goal of the season on an empty net at 17:15 of the third period to put the Avalanche up 7-3.

Anton Lundell made it a 7-4 game with a goal at 18:17 of the third frame.

Next Up

The Avalanche conclude their four-game road trip against the Tampa Bay Lightning on Monday at 5 p.m. MT on Altitude2 and Altitude+.