In Denver, Philipp Grubauer made 34 saves to help the Colorado Avalanche defeat the Vegas Golden Knights, 4-3.
The win pushed the Avs into sole possession of the second wild card spot in the Western Conference.
Tyson Barrie had a goal for Avs in win over Vegas 0 file photo by Lewis Bleiman
“That’s a big win,” Avalanche head coach Jared Bednar said. “That puts pressure back on the teams that are underneath us. Friday, regardless of if we won or lost tonight, that’s a big game, a huge game. If we can win that game we put ourselves in a good spot.”
Tyson Barrie, Matt Calvert, Nathan MacKinnon, and Gabriel Bourque scored for the Avs who trail the Dallas Stars by three points for the first wild card spot.
“Tyson’s goal is off a face-off, he doesn’t like his shot right away but he drives his feet and gets it to the net where there’s bodies and traffic,” Bednar said. “He’s scored quite a few goals like that recently.”
Alex Tuch, Paul Stastny and Reilly Smith scored for the Knights.
“We should be battling from the first shift,” Knights head coach Gerard Gallant said. “That’s where we lost the game. We lost the game in the first period because we didn’t compete and didn’t battle and got outskated.”
Tuch scored late to close the gap to 4-3 and the Knights had a brief power play to finish the match.
“Obviously we made it interesting there,” Barrie said. “They’re a good team and they’ve been playing really well lately so it’s not a surprise they were going to give us a push at the end. We showed a lot of character to kind of grind that one out.”
[WATCH: All Golden Knights vs. Avalanche highlights]
Malcolm Subban made 26 saves in the loss.
“You want to give the team a chance to win but it’s tough to play from behind,” Subban said. “It’s not easy to come back in this league, it’s tough.”
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