Avs rally for 3-2 win over Nashville in OT

In Nashville, the Predators took a 2-0 lead on the visiting Colorado Avalanche on Friday before giving it all away in a 3-2 loss in extra time.

Ryan Johansen scored in the first period to gives Nashville a 1-0 lad.

“I thought we started out pretty good,” Johansen said. “I liked our first period, and [we] just got away from it a little bit. Kind of made self-inflicted mistakes, gave them some momentum and some offense. Then we had a good push there later in the third. It’s a good hockey club over there. They’re a good team. It was a tough game. It was still good to at least get a point.”

Matt Duchene hit for a second Preds goal in the middle frame for the poisoned 2-0 advantage.

Mikko Rantanen started the rally for the Avs at 12:46 of the middle frame to get them within 2-1.

Alexandar Georgiev made 38 saves in the Colorado win.

“It feels awesome,” said Georgiev. “Nothing came easy the last few games. Every win felt really special because it’s tie games every time. It’s overtime or one-goal game or shootout. Awesome job by the guys sticking with it and having the championship character.”

The Avalanche improved to 19-11-2.

J.T. Compher forced the extra session when he scored at 15:05 of the third to tie it, 2-2.

“It would have been an easy night going into the break to probably pack it in, but it’s not what our group is all about,” Colorado coach Jared Bednar said. “There’s a lot of excuses they could make, but they keep coming to work and finding ways to win hockey games. It’s been a great group effort, and I’m pretty proud of them to this point in the season.”

The Predators dropped to 14-13-5.

“[The power play] has been pretty good,” Predators captain Roman Josi said. “Not just the goal, in general, we moved it pretty well. … I feel like we are getting more shots to the net. We saw on [Johansen’s] goal, get some rebounds and that’s huge.”

The Avs completed the rally with Samuel Girard‘s winner in the extra session with 43 seconds left.

“We’ve been fighting, grinding out wins, low-scoring games,” the Avs Evan Rodrigues said. “Even when we’re down, guys believe we can come back.”