In Tempe, the Coyotes crawled out from under a 4-0 deficit on Wednesday night to hand the visiting Colorado Avalanche a 5-4 loss in extra time.
The Coyotes trailed by four in the second period before scoring five straight, including the winner from Jack McBain scored with 20 seconds left in extra time.
“There wasn’t much to it,” McBain said. “`Zuck’ (Jason Zucker) set a good shot on net, I just went there hard and got a piece of my stick on it. It was a greasy goal, but I’ll take it.”
Karel Vejmelka made 20 saves in the win.
The Coyotes improved to 18-14-2.
“Once we got the momentum, we just kept pushing,” Zucker said. “We did a great job of staying on them and not letting them breathe.”
Nathan MacKinnon and Mikko Rantanen hit for power play goals in the run up to the Avs’ 4-0 lead.
Rantanen opened the scoring at 18:16 for a 1-0 lead to teh Avs.
In the middle frame, Colorado scored three times.
Jonathan Drouin scored with 64 seconds gone in the second for a 2-0 lead to Colorado.
Colorado’s Logan O’Connor pushed the advantage to 3-0 at 7:56, on a wraparound goal.
“They’ve got some dangerous guys over there that can turn plays and turn offense quickly, and we kind of handed a few to them tonight,” Colorado’s Devon Toews said. “We made it easier on them with how we were giving it to them and how we were allowing them to generate offense.”
The Avs dropped to 21-11-3.
“They pushed in the third (period), and we didn’t push back,” Colorado coach Jared Bednar said. “We need to be a little bit smarter with the puck. … We just fed into it. We fed into their press and eventually they got the goals they needed.”
MacKinnon scored his two-skater power play goal at 13:26 of the second to balloon the lead to 4-0.
“I loved the way we played the first 40 minutes. … [But] if we had a breakdown in D-zone coverage tonight, it was in the back of the net. They made some nice plays in there, but I’d say some of that was self-inflicted,” Bednar said.
That’s when the Coyotes put a pin in the Avs’ balloon.
Lawson Crouse trimmed the deficit to 4-1 at 16:31 of the middle frame.
“When it was 4-0, obviously it was frustrating. I felt we were playing well, but then when `Crouser’ broke the ice, I said, `OK, we’ve got a game here,’“ Coyotes coach Andre Tourigny said.
The third period scoring opened with Michael Kesselring cutting the deficit to 4-2 at 3:48.
Zucker followed that up at 7:04 of the third to get the Coyotes within one at 4-3..
“It was a good character win for us,” McBain said. “They’re a really good team, and to get down to them 4-0 is really tough to come back from, but we stuck in there, `Vej’ played great, and obviously it was an amazing comeback.”
Sean Durzi forced the extra session when he scored at 17:53 for a 4-4 tie.
“Once we got the momentum, we just kept pushing,” Zucker said. “We did a great job of staying on them and not letting them breathe.”
Alexandar Georgiev made 22 saves in the loss.
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