Avalanche Sweep Oilers in Overtime Avs await winner of the New York Rangers-Tampa Bay Lightning Eastern Conference Final

The Colorado Avalanche swept the season series with a massive two-goal comeback against the Edmonton Oilers in the third period.

After a bad slashing call three minutes into the game on Zach Kassian, Cale Makar snipes a perfect bar-down goal on the power play.

“I’m proud of the guys; we didn’t play great, especially in the second period and we had some mistakes,” Avalanche coach Jared Bednar said. “They capitalized, and we talked about it after the second and wanted to make sure that we came out and played our game and we did that and we gave up some goals after fighting back into it and had to fight back into it again. It’s just resilience, belief, guys just wanting to win and that’s stepping up and making plays at key times and we saw that tonight.”

After four straight Colorado penalties kept the Oilers from being completely overwhelmed by the Avalanche’s pressure during the first period. This allowed Edmonton to gain just enough time for Hyman to tie the game.

A bad defensive turnover and power play goal later, the Oilers found themselves entering the third period with a 3-1 lead.

The game completely opened, and the Avalanche handily controlled much of the third period by scoring four goals to the Oilers two and sent the game to overtime.

Despite being back and forth, a beautiful face off play from Artturi Lehkonen to knock the puck down to himself sent the Oilers packing.

“It was a good bounce,” Lehkonen said. “I got a tip on the first shot and then it bounced right on my tape.”

The Colorado Avalanche sweep the series 4-0

“I liked that there was no quit,” the Oilers Connor McDavid said. “I don’t think anyone quit out there, no one quit on each other. That’s always a good sign, but we, obviously, let it get away.”

Makar had a fantastic night and collected one goal and three assists while also playing fantastic defensively.

The top line for Colorado was gaining plenty of pressure but was struggling to create any space in In front of goaltender Mike Smith until the third period. Then they were scoring almost at will.

“It feels good, it’s a step in the right direction and it feels good to move past another round,” the Avs Gabriel Landeskog said. “We know the job’s not finished, but I think our group showed some real good resiliency in the third period. We talked about it after the second that we still hadn’t played our best and it felt like we wanted to give it a good shot and start stringing some good shifts together and we got some big goals and got the job done, which is obviously a good feeling.”

Edmonton had the ability for the first time this series to get cross-ice passes in front of the Avs net and often put Pavel Francouz in near-impossible positions.

“We had the lead, and it seems like when we got the lead, they’d come at you in waves and we couldn’t withstand that, couldn’t get some saves, couldn’t get the bounces,” Smith said. “And ultimately, they got another break there at the end and win the series.”

Despite looking solid, he just couldn’t hold off some of the talented plays from the Oilers.

“I’m proud of the group to get to this point, I don’t think anyone necessarily expected us to be here,” Edmonton’s Leon Draisaitl said. “With that being said, we expected to be here, and we want to be here, and we want to be even further. I’m proud of the group, but it’s very disappointing and it [stinks] right now. But we have to make sure that we come back next season and understand how hard it is to win, what it takes to go on a deep run, and take that next step.”

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However, Edmonton wasn’t able to get any sustained pressure unlike Colorado and that was a deciding factor in this game and the rest of the series.

“We’ve been up and we’ve gotten tight and we figured we’d try to make them tight,” Colorado’s Nathan MacKinnon said. “It puts a little doubt in their mind. Their season was on the line and we pushed and pushed and we finally broke through and it feels awesome to move on.”