In Washington, DC, the visiting Colorado Avalanche put up four straight goals and then held off the Capitals in 6-3 decision on Monday afternoon.
Six different skaters had strikes for the Avs including Nazem Kadri, Mikko Rantanen, Erik Johnson, Nikita Zadorov, and Matt Nieto. 
Philipp Grubauer made 29 saves to get the win for Colorado who have won five straight games.
“It’s good,” Avalanche head coach Jared Bednar said. “I’m proud of our guys because we’ve been throwing a lot at them here lately and playing the right way and the habits that we want to build is the most important thing to me.”
Colorado is 5-0-0 on the season.
“I don’t think we’ve played our best yet. We haven’t played 60 minutes, yet. We’ve got to clean some stuff up,” Grubauer said. “For sure, I think we dodged a couple bullets a little bit early and got the win, but overall we got the two points and nobody’s asking at the end how.”
Alex Ovechkin, Lars Eller and T.J. Oshie had the Caps goals. Washington rallied from a 0-4 deficit to cut the Avs lead to 5-3 in the third period.
“We had a discussion about between [the first and second] periods and we responded accordingly,” Capitals head coach Todd Reirden said. “Battled till the end there and have a call not go our way, but you’re not setting yourself up for success with starting that way.”
Nathan MacKinnon added an empty net goal with less than a minute in regulation to seal the win.
“I think in the third we started to play a little bit more simple, chip it out and make some easy passes instead of forcing it and then away we go, 5-0 that’s a pretty good start,” Andre Burakovsky said.
[WATCH: All Avalanche vs. Capitals highlights]
Braden Holtby, got the start for the Caps, but was given an early hook after facing three shots and standing aside for all three to hit twine.
“You’ve just got to find a way to help the team win,” Holtby said. “Tonight, I didn’t do that and it’s on me to make sure I improve. It’s frustrating and I’ve just got to get back to work and work harder and find a way back to that mindset that success comes from.”
Ilya Samsonov made 19 saves in a mop up.
“We got away from our team identity right from the start. You can see the difference when we played to our identity and started to be physical and forecheck, the whole game changed. We’ve got to be able to do that for 60 full minutes,” Reirden said after the loss.
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