It took nearly all of overtime but finally the Colorado Avalanche got a win on home, 2-1, over the New York Islanders Friday night.
Nathan MacKinnon scored with 16 seconds left in the extra session to provide the margin of victory.
“It was a long time coming,” MacKinnon said. “It’s been tough at home, it’s been tough in general, obviously. Wins haven’t been easy to get, and obviously we have a lot of work to do still, but it definitely feels good.”
Calvin Pickard made 35 as he stopped his own losing streak at five games.
“Huge relief,” he said. “It’s tough to get out of a streak when you’re losing every game at home. We weren’t playing with a whole lot of confidence. Hopefully this builds some of that and we can string some wins together. It’s been a long time, it’s been tough. We’re still in a huge hole. Just getting a win was big.
“Losing in overtime wouldn’t have been great. It’s nice to get a [positive] result. I thought I’d been playing pretty decent the past few games and not [getting] much results.”
WATCH: All Islanders vs. Avalanche highlights
Thomas Greiss made 37 saves in the loss for the Isles who had not played since New Year’s Eve.
“I think we played pretty hard, especially coming out of a break,” Greiss said. “We fell behind pretty quick, but we responded good after the goal we gave up. I think we played a pretty good game and just got a little bit unlucky and we didn’t score.”
The Avs’ regulation goal came from Gabriel Landeskog early in the first period that gave Colorado the 1-0 lead.
Johnny Boychuk scored for the Islanders in the second while New York had a two-man advantage.
“With the break that we had and coming into the thin air here, I thought it was a really good effort. I just liked the fact that we were in attack mode the whole game. Maybe the first part of the season we were sitting back, but we were going pretty good tonight,” Islanders head coach Jack Capuano said after the game in Denver.
As the NHL trade season looms, teams with talent and no where to go may start to unload salary and look for next year including Colorado where several names have been rumored to be moving.
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