In Denver, Alexandar Georgiev made 25 saves and the Colorado Avalanche defeated the Nashville Predators, 3-1 on Saturday night.
“I liked our game tonight. Was real good intensity right away, checking game was pretty good, special teams were good,” Colorado coach Jared Bednar said. “I thought we had a good overall team effort. ‘Georgie’ played a nice game in net too.”
After a scoreless first period, the Avs took a 2-0 lead on goals from Mikko Rantanen and Alex Newhook.
“I think his confidence is really high right now; he’s an elite player,” Colorado forward Evan Rodrigues said of Rantanen. “He’s got every tool. I think since [Nathan Mackinnon has] gone down [with an injury], he’s really taken it upon himself to kind of lead this team. He wants the puck on his stick. He wants to be the guy that makes the play, whether it’s pass, shot, hit, whatever it may be. I think he’s really taken it upon himself to kind of lead this team.”
Colorado improved to 16-11-2.
“I just tried to jump into the play, figured I could be a trailer, and then shaped into be a 2-on-1. Expected to get the pass and picked my spot,” Newhook said. “I just kind of look to see where the openings are. Sometimes I try to get it off as quick as I can, but I tried to settle a bit, look up, and then saw blocker side [open].”
Matt Duchene scored in the third period to get the Preds back to within one, 2-1.
“I thought it was a good effort. I thought it was a hard-fought game,” Nashville coach John Hynes said. “When you break the game down, I think it was pretty even 5-on-5, and then we both had a 5-on-5 goal. They had a power-play goal, and then they had the 6-on-5 goal. I thought there’s a little stretch in the second period where we took some penalties that weren’t good penalties. They got some momentum on the power play from that.”
Nashville dropped to 12-13-4 after their sixth straight loss.
“Nino [Niederreiter] made a good play being strong on the puck, and [I] picked it up, wrapped it and got a nice bounce, was able to put it in. Nothing more than that,” Duchene said. “We battled hard, but at the end of the day, you score one goal in regulation, you’re not going to win.”
Cale Makar hit an empty-net goal for the 3-1 final with less than a minute left on the clock.
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Juuse Saros made 27 saves in the Predators loss.
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