In Denver, the Colorado Avalanche got two goals from Mikko Rantanen on Monday night in a 4-2 win over the Arizona Coyotes.
Philipp Grubauer made 35 saves for the win.
After falling behind by three goals, the Coyotes tried to rally off two strikes from Johan Larsson and Michael Bunting in the third period to close within 3-2.
The Coyotes have lost four in a row.
“I think we played a really good game today,” Arizona’s Niklas Hjalmarsson said. “I don’t think they had that many chances. At the same time, I think we created a couple of decent ones. Obviously, the points are huge right now and the most important, but I feel like these two games can bring us some confidence for the rest of the games that are left.”
Nathan MacKinnon also scored for the Avs.
“We gave up some pretty high-quality chances, and ‘Grubi’ bailed us out like he usually does,” the Avs’ Cale Makar said. “Fortunately for us, he was having a pretty good night. We know the areas we can clean up, but I think for us it’s just another learning curve. We didn’t want to let them back in the game like that, but I thought we showed resiliency when it got close and we started to pick it up again.”
Rantanen iced the victory with an empty net with with less than two minutes left on the clock.
“Probably some things we were not sharp enough,” Rantanen said. “There are some things we could’ve done better, so maybe we lost focus a little bit.”
Ivan Prosvetov made 16 saves in the loss.
“It was exciting, my first career start, for sure,” Prosvetov said. “My teammates were really supportive. They really did a good job in front of me. I think we played a good hockey game.”
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