The Vancouver Canucks scored double on his first four shots Saturday night as they magnified the Avalanche’s most glaring difficulty of lapses and playing behind.
In a match between two highly rested teams in front of a sellout crowd at the Pepsi Center, the Canucks (24-22-6, 54 points) chose a three-goal lead twice before prevailing 5-1 to leapfrog Colorado (22-21-8, 52 points) to the eighth and final Western Conference playoff place. The Avs formerly maintained the No. 8 area because they played one less game than Vancouver.
The Canucks’ first aim just 1:32 into the match came to a hurry, following defenseman Ian Cole created a pinch at the neutral zone to create the assault.
“Routine coverage performs we ’ re there to — however we don’t do the job and the puck is at the back of our web site. We’d two of these tonight,” ” Avs coach Jared Bednar said. “The 2 things that we’ve spoke about lately is our defending dedication and we have to work we have to compete in these battles we have to be in all of our construction circumstances. And then the other one is. We weren’t good tonight. ”
Both teams played their first match in 10 days, using their designated bye week following the NHL all-star break. Colorado dropped to 2-8 in its last 10 games and 10-9-5 at home, where it tied a franchise record with 28 victories last year.
Avs goalie Semyon Varlamov dropped for the fifth time in his past seven starts and wasn ’ t. Winger Matt Calvert scored Colorado’s goal to give the hosts existence in the next phase, but the Avs’ finest players — including their goalie t do it .
The top set of Cole and Erik Johnson were equally minus-2, Together with forwards Nathan MacKinnon, Gabe Landeskog and Mikko Rantanen. MacKinnon centered three pairs of wingers as Bednar shook the lines up to find balance.
“We’ve tried every lineup combination on the planet in the last two months and we now ’re not getting results,” Bednar said. “So I didn’t enjoy (the newest lines). ”
Without the benefit of an energy play, Vancouver took a 4-1 lead. At that point, the Avs didn’t invest a penalty and had more opportunities but couldn’t because they couldn ’ t keep the puck from their net maintain the momentum.
In 11:18 of the next stage, Colorado winger Matt Calvert got a piece of Nikita Zadorov’s blast from the point to trim Vancouver’s cause 3-1.
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But four minutes later, Tyler Motte wasn’t stick-checked in front and tapped at a feed out of defensman Troy Stecher to put the Canucks up by three. Motte showed his rod but MacKinnon failed to lift it until Stecher’s pass landed on it.
“You’ll never win by playing behind,” Johnson stated. “You have to play with a lead in this league. It’s s difficult to play with catch-up hockey. The first aim, we provide up an odd-man dash than two minutes. You’re not mentally engaged when you do this, I feel. Purpose , not much of a chance — great shot. Third aim, I think we were a bit lazy coming straight to our D-zone, discounted coverage, goal. Fourth goal, not powerful enough around our net, enabling them free suggestions accessibility in front of our web site. We got to become stronger to play . ”
The Avs committed consecutive penalties in the next period and the Canucks’ Nikolay Goldobin scored during the second to make it 5-1.
Jake Virtanen and Brock Boeser scored in the first period for Vancouver and Antoine Roussel made it 3-0 at 7:30 of the next period.
Footnotes. The Avalanche will practice Sunday to prepare for Tuesday’s home game against the Columbus Blue Jackets. Colorado starts a three-game trip Thursday at Washington — a stretch which has the Avs enjoying with four of five games outside Denver. … Referee Tom Chmielewski of Colorado Springs worked the match with Gord Dwyer. Chmielewski is your NHL’s only Colorado-born official.
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