MacKinnon, Avalanche defeat Flames for 3rd straight victory
Forward has goal, assist, Nichushkin goal streak ends at 6 for Colorado, which has won 6 of 7
By
Ryan Boulding
NHL.com Independent Correspondent
Jonathan Drouin and Ryan Johansen scored for the Avalanche (14-6-0), who have won six of their past seven games, including a 3-2 victory at the Minnesota Wild on Friday. Ivan Prosvetov made 29 saves.
“I felt good about our team coming in,” Colorado coach Jared Bednar said. “I think we had a few guys lacking a little bit of energy tonight, as I'm sure they did. They played last night too. So, if you’re ever going to get a back-to-back, it's nice that both teams are not playing on full tanks. But I thought, overall, team effort was pretty good. Penalty kill was great again, got a good goaltending performance, scored some timely goals.”
Valeri Nichushkin’s six-game goal streak ended for Colorado. He had an assist to extend his point streak to seven games (11 points; seven goals, four assists).
“He's been outstanding,” Bednar said of Nichushkin. “I played him 27 minutes last night. He didn't look like he was lacking any energy tonight in the back-to-back when some guys were. I kind of got the feeling that maybe after he had his baby and everything kind of settled down that we'd start to see him go, and we have.”
Mikael Backlund scored, and Dan Vladar made 21 saves for the Flames (8-10-3), who came off a 7-4 win against the Dallas Stars on Friday and finished 2-2-0 on a four-game road trip.
“We're still there, it's just we're getting ourselves closer to .500, and we can't find a way to get that game to get there,” Calgary coach Ryan Huska said. “That’s the next step for us. This is a .500 road trip for us. Now we have to go home and make sure we perform well at home.”
Drouin gave the Avalanche a 1-0 lead at 6:31 of the first period after he took a pass from Mikko Rantanen above the right circle, skated into the slot and fired a snap shot far side past Vladar’s blocker. MacKinnon had a secondary assist to extend his home point streak to nine games (16 points; five goals, 11 assists).
“He looks great,” Rantanen said of Drouin. “I think he’s really hit his stride in the last couple of weeks. Honestly, that game against Vegas we lost 7-0 (Nov. 4), he was great. I think he’s kind of taken off from there. He’s been doing all of the right things. I have a lot of confidence he’ll keep it going.”
Johansen made it 2-0 at 10:10 of the second period when he chased down a loose puck at the left circle and took it low before scoring on a backhanded wraparound.
“Was running out of options quick,” Johansen said. “I felt like it was an impossible angle to score from on my backhand. So thought the next best thing would be a wraparound, and it worked out, so it was nice. It's a great feeling. There's not a better feeling in the world than scoring a goal in the NHL. It never gets old.”
Backlund cut it to 2-1 at 12:03 of the second, driving to the net and scoring off a pass from Jonathan Huberdeau.
“You want to catch momentum with that, and then they scored,” Backlund said. “Momentum kind of swings right back to them. So, that was a tough break. Like I said, thought it was a close game even though I thought they were better than us.”
MacKinnon extended it to 3-1, scoring 34 seconds later at 12:37 after cutting to the middle and putting in a wrist shot high to the far side.
“He tends to have these stretches throughout the course of every year that he gets snakebit a little bit,” Bednar said. “He's still generating some good chances and doesn't put the puck in the net. He's still picking up a lot of points and production with helping his linemates, but he also tends to get hot every once in a while and ride a streak for a while.”
NOTES: With an assist on MacKinnon’s goal, Cale Makar got his 276th point (70 goals, 206 assists) with the Avalanche to pass John-Michael Liles (275) for the the second-most by a defenseman in franchise history (Tyson Barrie has 307); he's also one assist shy of tying Liles (207) for second in assists. … Makar (20 games) became the fastest defenseman in franchise history to have 30 points in a season, passing Jeff Brown (24 games in 1988-89 with Quebec). Makar has five goals and 25 assists.
