In Denver, Devan Dubnyk made 22 saves and the Avalanche held off a rally from the San Jose Sharks for a 4-3 win on Saturday night.
Alexander Barabanov and Logan Couture scored for the Sharks.
“It was unfortunate we couldn’t get at least a point,” Sharks head coach Bob Boughner said. “I thought [Korenar] made some big saves, especially the last 10 minutes of the second period. He was fighting to get through on some traffic on those two point shot goals in the third period. He’s battling hard and fighting hard.”
Mikko Rantanen and Nathan MacKinnon had multi-point games for the Avs, with a goal and assist each in the win.
“I thought we were more dangerous on the offensive side of it tonight than last game,” Avalanche head coach Jared Bednar said. “More jump, better shot mentality, a little bit better net presence. Last game we relied on our special teams, and tonight I thought we were pretty good 5-on-5. We continued with having success on our breakouts to get us out and moving. I thought we moved through the neutral zone a little bit better and created some rush opportunities, and in (offensive) zone play we started to get some good motion.”
Patrik Nemeth and Andre Burakovsky also scored for Colorado.
“Cale [Makar] made a great play, drew a guy to him, and I had an open lane and just took a shot,” Nemeth said. “It was a good play by him to create some movement there.”
San Jose’s Tomas Hertl scored with a little more than two minutes left on the game clock to make the score 4-3.
Josef Korenar made 39 saves in the loss.
“[Korenar] kept us in the game,” Couture said. “He was probably our best player for a majority of the night. It could have been a lot more than the four that they got. We made it a game at the end, but I wish we would have helped him out a little more.”
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