Girard gets OT winner, Avalanche edge Predators

DENVER -- Samuel Girard scored on a breakaway at 2:47 of overtime to give the Colorado Avalanche a 3-2 win against the Nashville Predators at Ball Arena on Monday.

Girard stole the puck from Brady Skjei in the Avalanche zone, drew a delayed penalty on his rush up the ice, and scored his first goal of the season on a wrist shot that beat goalie Juuse Saros’ blocker.

“It's always nice to have a breakaway. Got a chance to score as well,” Girard said. “That was kind of like a read. I saw that [Skjei was] kind of like falling down.”

Devon Toews and Mikko Rantanen scored, and Girard also had an assist for the Avalanche (8-8-0), who have won two straight and three of four. Nathan MacKinnon had an assist to extend his season-opening home point streak to 10 games (five goals, 17 assists), and Alexandar Georgiev made 29 saves.

“I thought it was a pretty evenly played hockey game. They won the first period, for sure,” Colorado coach Jared Bednar said. “I didn't like our first. We won the second. Third was pretty even. So it's good to squeak out to two points.”

Luke Evangelista and Colton Sissons scored for the Predators (5-9-2), who have lost four of five. Saros made 29 saves.

“I thought we did some things that put us in a really good position to win a hockey game, didn't capitalize a little bit at times and obviously a little bit of a lapse there near the end,” Nashville coach Andrew Brunette said. “We're still trying to build our 5-on-5 game.

“We're just happy to get 5-on-5 goals right now. They've been hard to come by.”

Evangelista scored to make it 1-0 when he corralled a rebound at the top of the crease and put it past Georgiev’s pad at 1:45 of the first period.

“We've had a number of guys pretty snakebitten early on, and we're trying to get any confidence instilled into guys that we can and hopefully that gets them going, too,” Sissons said. “Coming into this building and at altitude and all those things is never easy, so it's big to get a point coming out of here to start a big, tough trip that we're on. Hopefully we can keep building.”

Toews tied it 1-1 when his one-time slap shot from the point deflected in off the stick of Sissons and the leg of Gustav Nyquist at 4:32 of the second period.

“Last few games, he's been really good. Really good. His best of the year,” Bednar said of Toews. “That's been a strength of our team for years now, the involvement of our 'D' on the offensive side of it. We've been pushing them to get even more involved, and we're starting to get rewarded for it a little bit.”

Rantanen made it 2-1 with a one-timer from the right face-off dot at 11:37 of the second.

Sissons tied it 2-2 when he received Roman Josi’s seam pass at the right side of the net and beat Georgiev 59 seconds into the third period.

“I have a couple of teams that I seem to score against, but [it] hasn’t been coming too easy this year,” Sissons said. “So hopefully we can get this thing rolling a little bit.”

NOTES: MacKinnon (seven goals, 23 assists in 16 games) tied Joe Sakic (1992-93) as the third-fastest player in Avalanche/Quebec Nordiques history to reach 30 points in a season. … MacKinnon became the first player to reach the 30-point mark this season and joined Leon Draisaitl(14 games in 2021-22), Connor McDavid (15 games in 2022-23, 16 games in 2021-22) and David Pastrnak (15 games in 2019-20) as the only active players to do so in 16 or fewer games. … Nyquist played in his 800th career NHL game.