In Denver, the Colorado Avalanche rallied back from a two0-goal deficit on Monday night, but they could not solve the riddle of the Tampa Bay Lightning.
Nikita Kucherov scored at 3:03 of extra time to give the Lightning a 4-3 win that pushed their winning streak to 11 games.
“If you’re fluking your way to 11 straight, it’s not a recipe for success,” Tampa Bay coach Jon Cooper said. “These 11, for the most part, it hasn’t all been perfect, but it’s been pretty darn good. We don’t leave games saying, ‘Holy cow, how did we get that one?’ For the most part we’re leaving games saying, ‘You know what? We did deserve that.'”
Curtis McElhinney made 24 saves to get the win.
“I don’t think we played well today, but we still got a win,” Kucherov said. “We have to improve a lot in our game because we have a lot of good teams ahead of us. I don’t think we had a good effort today.”
Valeri Nichushkin knotted the game at 3-3 fr the Avs.
“I think every team’s going through it a little bit,” Colorado head coach Jared Bednar said. “But you start racking them up with Grubauer, Kadri, Calvert, now Mikko, our other guys got to step up. It’s a great opportunity.
“We have to find a way to carve out wins like we did early in the year. It’s going to get tougher and tougher, but hopefully we can get those guys healthy and back to join our team as soon as possible and guys are going to get opportunities and callups, and [it’s] more ice time for guys that have been here wanting more ice time. We’ll see what they got.”
Steven Stamkos, Cameron Gaunce and Alex Killorn were the strikers for the Lightning in regulation.
“It means a lot,” Gaunce said. “In the moment, you can’t grasp the significance of it. As my career has gone on, I’ve taken notice of the things that have gone on, live in the moment. Something like that, I’m really proud of it.”
Nathan MacKinnon scored and Andre Burakovsky power play goal gave the Avs an early 1-0 lead.
[WATCH: All Lightning vs. Avalanche highlights]
Pavel Francouz made 23 saves in the loss.
“Their best player gets a breakaway and I wasn’t able to stop it,” Francouz said. “Their best player (Kucherov) gets the puck on the blue line, he was racing with Nathan. He kind of opened me up a little bit and he shot it 5-hole. I thought I had it for a while, but unfortunately it just went in and got stuck in the net.”
Mikko Rantanen left the game holding a shoulder after being tripped into the boards.
Bednar said he would be lost for weeks.
“I think every team’s going through it a little bit,” Bednar said. “But you start racking them up with Grubauer, Kadri, Calvert, now Mikko, our other guys got to step up. It’s a great opportunity.
“We have to find a way to carve out wins like we did early in the year. It’s going to get tougher and tougher, but hopefully we can get those guys healthy and back to join our team as soon as possible and guys are going to get opportunities and callups, and [it’s] more ice time for guys that have been here wanting more ice time. We’ll see what they got.”
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