Mittelstadt gets 3 assists, Avalanche hold on, edge Senators for 5th straight win

DENVER -- Casey Mittelstadt had three assists, and the Colorado Avalanche held on to win 5-4 against the Ottawa Senators at Ball Arena on Sunday.

Nikolai Kovalenko, Josh Manson, Logan O'Connor, Ross Colton and Nathan MacKinnon each scored for the Avalanche (5-4-0), who have won five straight after losing their first four games of the season.

“We learned a lot of lessons in those four [losses],” Colorado coach Jared Bednar said. “It's not exclusive to us. Happens all the time. When you’re losing, then you feel like you're not playing well, and you start digging in to start playing better. It's the attention to detail and the buy-in, the commitment that it takes to win. Just doing everything harder and cleaner.”

MacKinnon and Cale Makar each extended their season-opening point streak to nine games, and Justus Annunen made 26 saves in his fourth straight start.

Claude Giroux scored twice, and Brady Tkachuk had a goal and two assists for the Senators (4-4-0), who have lost two straight. Anton Forsberg made 25 saves.

“We didn't play good enough to win. Our goalie gave us a great game,” said Ottawa coach Travis Green. “I thought physically, we didn't play well enough, but he gave us a good enough game to give us a chance to get a point. But mentally, we weren't very sharp either. We made some mistakes that more or less led to three goals.

“There's just little, tiny details that are pretty ‘A.B.C.’ that we didn't perform, and when you don't do that, that tells me that you weren't ready to play. I didn't think we were physically a good hockey team, and mentally, we definitely weren't sharp enough to win.”

Linus Ullmark briefly replaced Forsberg in net two separate times in the second period while Forsberg received equipment repairs. Ullmark finished with two saves in 4:46 of ice time.

“I got the shot off that one-timer. It went off my toe, and all of a sudden, I couldn't really skate, and my steel popped up and was like bent on the outside,” Forsberg said. “Then we couldn't find the screw, so they were trying [to]. So that's why I had to go off twice, because it wasn't the right screw. So it came out again, and then finally, we found one from our backup pair.”

Kovalenko scored his first NHL goal to make it 1-0 Colorado at 19:52 of the first period. He one-timed Mittelstadt’s pass past Forsberg from the top of the crease while a delayed penalty gave the Avalanche a 6-on-5 advantage.

“I'm happy for him. I like seeing those guys get rewarded,” Bednar said. "He's done a nice job, though. He's a competitive guy, likes to make plays, can play with some offensive guys, and you see that. Whether he's making the play or on the receiving end of it, he's got good instincts around the net.”

Manson made it 2-0 when his backhand shot from the high slot found its way through traffic in front and squeaked past Forsberg at 19:42 of the second period.

Tkachuk cut the lead to 2-1 at 9:15 of the third period. Tyler Kleven's shot from the top of the right circle missed the net and bounced off the boards right to Tkachuk for a tap-in.

“That's not the way we need to play. We gifted them a couple goals,” Tkachuk said. “Just mental mistakes. Got into old habits that we thought we got out of, but just need to be a whole lot better.”

Nick Cousins tied it 2-2 at 11:23 of the third when he backhanded the rebound from Tim Stutzle’s point shot over Annunen's pad.

O’Connor gave Colorado a 3-2 lead, chipping Mittelstadt’s centering pass past Forsberg from atop the crease at 13:29 of the third period.

Colton extended the lead to 4-2 at 15:01, lifting his own rebound into the net as he drove to the crease.

“I thought we played pretty well there in the first. Parts of the second, I think we kind of sat back. They kind of took it to us,” Colton said. “I thought in the third, we kind of got back to playing our game, and that was just forechecking, kind of making their 'D' turn, getting pucks on net, and 'Jus' made some big saves for us there down the line.”

Giroux cut the lead to 4-3 when he one-timed Drake Batherson’s pass at the right face-off dot at 16:48 of the third.

MacKinnon scored an empty-net goal at 18:45 to make it 5-3. He also had a goal disallowed in the first period due to goaltender interference.

Giroux scored again at 19:50 with Forsberg pulled for the extra attacker for the 5-4 final.

NOTES: MacKinnon and Makar joined Bruins teammates Phil Esposito and Bobby Orr (15 games in 1973-74) as the second forward-defenseman duo in NHL history to record simultaneous season-opening points streaks of at least nine games. … MacKinnon joined Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux and Ron Francis as the fourth player in NHL history to have at least three season-opening point streaks of nine-plus games (18 games in 2019-20, 15 games in 2018-19).