The Colorado Avalanche appeared to be on their way to yet another loss Monday night in Toronto.
The Maple Leafs grabbed a 2-0 lead in the second period before the Avs’ offense got on track and reeled off three straight goals to take a 3-2 lead in the middle frame.
Semyon Varlamov picked up the win Toronto – file photo courtesy of Lewis Bleiman
The Leafs came back to tie it at 3-3 but the Avs again used a three-goal outburst to stun the Maple Leafs, 6-3,
Carl Soderberg picked up his first NHL hat trick in the Avs’ win.
“It feels pretty good. I think we played good from the start,” Soderberg said. “Even when they scored the second goal, you could feel on the bench we were going tonight. I’m glad we could get a win here tonight.”
The win snapped a funk the Avs have been in for weeks and helped them improved to 21-17-8.
Gabriel Landeskog, Mikko Rantanen and Matt Calvert added single markers in the win.
“It was hard to earn ice and get into the interior of the ice to create scoring chances, but I liked our resiliency,” Avalanche coach Jared Bednar said. “Our bench was positive and kept pushing in the right direction.”
Semyon Varlamov made 17 saves in the victory.
“We had to dig in there and fight from behind and show some character and resiliency, and we did that,” Bednar said. “The other night (a 3-0 loss at the Montreal Canadiens on Saturday), we didn’t respond after we gave up one and kind of crumbled a little bit.
“Tonight was a different feel. We needed something to go our way and had some of our top guys make some plays.”
Igor Ozhiganov, Kasperi Kapanen and Mitchell Marner had the Leafs’ goals.
“We only have ourselves to blame,” Maple Leafs coach Mike Babcock said. “Myself as the head coach, I’m responsible. We didn’t play well enough, we didn’t play hard enough. We’ll take a day off, take a breath and then get back to work because this is not good enough.”
[WATCH: All Avalanche vs. Maple Leafs highlights]
Frederik Andersen returned to the Leafs’ net and yielded four goals.
“You just feel a little bit slow on your reads maybe and maybe the patience wasn’t there on some of the plays, but you get back into it and hopefully it goes better next time,” Andersen said. “They definitely came to work and did well tonight. You have to be careful with teams like that; sometimes they come and outwork you and they definitely had their work boots on and got rewarded.”
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