In Glendale, the Colorado Avalanche posted four goals in the third period and turned a reasonably entertaining match into a 6-2 rout of the Arizona Coyotes on Saturday evening.
Nathan MacKinnon and Jacob MacDonald had goals for the Avs in the win.
“It’s a great feeling for some of us to get our first and get the monkey off our back, so to speak, and to come out of here with two wins,” MacDonald said.
Philipp Grubauer made 23 saves in the win.
“It was hard to sustain (a push) against a very good hockey club,” Arizona head coach Rick Tocchet said. “There were pockets of the game where [Nathan MacKinnon] had the puck in our end, and they’re very talented. They’re one of the best lines in the League.”
Ilya Lyubushkin and Clayton Keller were the Coyotes strikers.
“It was a one-goal game against a good hockey club, we’re still in the game and we can get points out of it,” the Coyotes’ Oliver Ekman-Larsson said. “But I took a stupid penalty, and it went downhill from there.”
The third period barrage started with Gabriel Landeskog who scored to make the game, 3-1.
After taking a the 3-1 lead in the third period, Joonas Donskoi and Tyson Jost added strikes for a 5-1 lead
“We want contributions from as many guys as we possibly can, but I think we’ve been a little bit snakebitten the last couple of weeks,” Landeskog said. “We’ve been creating scoring chances but not capitalizing. … I think tonight we got rewarded for the hard work.”
Pierre-Edouard Bellemare closed out the scoring with an empty-net goal for the and the 6-2 final.
“We want to play real solid hockey and play fast and not overcomplicate things,” Landeskog said. “I thought we did that over the last couple games and we’ve been getting rewarded for it.”
Antti Raanta made 35 saves in the loss.
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