In Denver, the Colorado Avalanche seem to have reached a consensus that they can without Nathan MacKinnon. It was tight, but they proved the point on Tuesday night, when they edged out the Minnesota Wild, 2-1.
Philipp Grubauer made 27 saves to help hold off the Wild.
“I think everybody tries to step up and help fill the role,” Colorado’s Cale Makar said. “Obviously, he’s a very special player and not any single person can fill that void. I think everybody as a collective group stepped up and played the role that we need them to. Overall, I think we played a relatively consistent game. We just kind of stuck to it.”
Kirill Kaprizov was the lone goal scorer for the Wild when he trimmed the 2-0 Avs lead to one goal in the middle frame.
“There’s extra ice time that’s getting distributed with the guys that we have out of the lineup, and I think some of those guys are eager to prove they deserve more ice time, 
and they’re making the decisions tough,” Avs head coach Jared Bednar said. “Minutes are up for grabs on a nightly basis, and I thought the bottom six guys did a great job.”
Logan O’Connor and Valeri Nichushkin scored for the Avs.
“You’re not going to see too many pretty goals from our line, we’re just trying to muck it up a bit,” O’Connor said of the fourth line with Sheldon Dries and Kiefer Sherwood. “We’ll leave those pretty ones to [Mikko] Rantanen, Cale or whatnot. We want to play to our identity, get pucks to the net, get traffic, create those in-tight scrums, and just try and get greasy ones.”
Cam Talbot made 29 saves in the loss.
“Both teams looked exhausted at the end,” Wild head coach Dean Evason said. “A lot of energy, really good hockey game, saw spurts back and forth. We thought we started real well, they pushed back, and we thought we finished extremely well. It was a battle. It was a really hard-fought hockey game that we felt could have gone either way.”
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