The second game of this season was one of the weirdest for the Colorado Avalanche. The Avs went to San Jose, suffocated the Sharks from start to finish, and still needed a shootout goal to eek by the rebuilding club.
Colorado did not dominate San Jose the same way in the second matchup, but the Avalanche did cruise to a 6-2 win at Ball Arena that featured far less tension about the outcome. Nathan MacKinnon had two goal and two assists while matching the longest point streak of his career at 15 games, and the power play struck twice for only the second time in 17 games.
“I feel very clear,” MacKinnon said. “The game feels slow, which is always a good feeling. I’m doing a lot of work away from the rink that no one sees and it’s paying off right now.”
The Avs have now won three times in four games after their worst stretch of the season. They also shrugged off a disappointing effort Saturday night in Winnipeg and reclaimed first place in the Central Division.
All three members of Colorado’s top line scored in the opening 24 minutes as the Avs built a 4-0 lead. Valeri Nichushkin and Mikko Rantanen both scored on the man advantage in the opening 12:15, giving the Avalanche two goals on its first eight shots against Sharks goalie Mackenzie Blackwood. Colorado peppered Blackwood with 52 shots back in October, but needed a late goal to get to overtime before winning 2-1 in a shootout.
Miles Wood scored late in the first period and then MacKinnon followed early in the second to give the Avs a comfortable 4-0 lead. San Jose began the season with 11 straight losses, but had won six of 10 coming into this one to climb out of last place in the NHL standings. The Sharks also erased four-goal leads in back-to-back contests earlier this month.
“This was about the way we wanted to play and I thought we accomplished everything we wanted to in the first period,” Avs coach Jared Bednar said. “We tried to simplify on our (zone) exits and then we wanted to have a linear, fast attack. I thought we did that in the first period.”
The Avalanche didn’t exactly kill this game off after going up by four goals, but the lead was never truly in doubt. Ryan Johansen snapped a nine-game goalless streak with a rebound tally in the third to provide a little extra cushion, and then MacKinnon added his second into an empty net.
MacKinnon moved into second place in the NHL scoring race with another big night. He’s up to 47 points, five behind Tampa Bay’s Nikita Kucherov for the league lead. He also has eight goals and 27 points during the 15-game streak.
The star center only had nine points in his first 10 games, which is not a “slump” for 99 percent of the players in the NHL. He had 14 shots on goal in one of those games: at SAP Center against the Sharks.
Alexandar Georgiev didn’t have a lot of work at times but shook off getting pulled from his last start with 26 saves. Georgiev had allowed at least three goals in four of his past five starts. Ivan Prosvetov had started three of the past four contests, while also winning in relief of Georgiev in the fourth.
“I thought he was fantastic. I thought he was great,” Bednar said. “We got sloppy for a couple times for five-minute stretches — not often — but they created some really good looks and some difficult saves and I thought he was really sharp.
FOOTNOTES: Cale Makar missed a second straight game with a nagging lower-body injury. Bednar said the club doesn’t want the injury to get worse, but he will travel with the team to Chicago for its next game.
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