Grubauer, Avalanche hold off Wild to win first game without MacKinnon

DENVER -- Philipp Grubauer made 27 saves, and the Colorado Avalanche won their first game without Nathan MacKinnon, 2-1 against the Minnesota Wild at Ball Arena on Tuesday.

MacKinnon, who leads the Avalanche with 14 points, is week to week after sustaining a lower-body injury in the second period of a 4-3 overtime loss to the Wild on Sunday.
"I think everybody tries to step up and help fill the role," Colorado defenseman Cale Makar said. "Obviously, he's a very special player and not any single person can fill that void. I think everybody as a collective group stepped up and played the role that we need them to. Overall, I think we played a relatively consistent game. We just kind of stuck to it."
Logan O'Connor and Valeri Nichushkin scored for the Avalanche (7-3-1), who are 4-0-1 in the past five games.

Grubauer has won four straight starts, allowing a total of five goals.
"He's real confident, real sure of himself right now," Avalanche coach Jared Bednar said. "He's not giving up a lot of rebounds, he looks real strong down low. He's holding his ground down there and he's making the saves when we need them."
Kirill Kaprizov scored, and Cam Talbot made 29 saves for Minnesota (6-5-0).
"Both teams looked exhausted at the end," Wild coach Dean Evason said. "A lot of energy, really good hockey game, saw spurts back and forth. We thought we started real well, they pushed back, and we thought we finished extremely well. It was a battle. It was a really hard-fought hockey game that we felt could have gone either way."
The Avalanche took a 1-0 lead at 17:45 of the first period when O'Connor banked a shot off Talbot's pad.
"You're not going to see too many pretty goals from our line, we're just trying to muck it up a bit," O'Connor said of the fourth line with Sheldon Dries and Kiefer Sherwood. "We'll leave those pretty ones to [Mikko] Rantanen, Cale or whatnot. We want to play to our identity, get pucks to the net, get traffic, create those in-tight scrums, and just try and get greasy ones."
Nichushkin increased the lead to 2-0 at 7:09 of the second period when he scored on the rebound of a Joonas Donskoi shot from the left face-off circle.
"There's extra ice time that's getting distributed with the guys that we have out of the lineup, and I think some of those guys are eager to prove they deserve more ice time, and they're making the decisions tough," Bednar said. "Minutes are up for grabs on a nightly basis, and I thought the bottom six guys did a great job."

Kaprizov scored a power-play goal from the slot after Zach Parise passed from behind the net to cut it to 2-1 at 13:05 of the second.
Minnesota was 2-for-41 on the power play this season before Kaprizov's goal. Colorado had killed 24 straight penalties in seven games.
"It was a pretty decent game defensively," Wild defenseman Ian Cole said. "Offensively, we had some chances we've got to bury. They had chances as well. There's improvement that can be had on both ends. We had a decent chance to win that hockey game, and [Talbot] played great for us. A lot of guys stepped up."
NOTES: Wild defenseman Jared Spurgeon sustained an upper-body injury in the second period and did not play in the third. Evason didn't have an update. … Wild forward Kevin Fiala completed his three-game suspension for boarding Los Angeles Kings defenseman Matt Roy on Jan. 29 and will be eligible to play Thursday in the finale of the four-game series against the Avalanche. … Makar had an assist and has seven points (one goal, six assists) during a five-game point streak. That matches his NHL career high, set in the first five games of last season (six assists from Oct. 3-14). … Donskoi had an assist and has five points (three goals, two assists) during a five-game point streak. … Dries had an Avalanche-high four hits in 8:20 in his season debut.