For the second time in less than a week, the Colorado Avalanche took on the Minnesota Wild as these two clubs concluded their regular-season series. It would be the Avalanche that would ultimately take this game by a final score of 5-2, who end up sweeping the regular-season series against the Wild.
Let’s take a look back at all the action from tonight!
First Period
Colorado would strike first in this game. At the 4:34 mark, Artturi Lehkonen would break the ice, no pun intended, with a power play goal. This play would start with Jonathan Drouin feeding a puck to Cale Makar at the top of the offensive zone, who would fire the puck on net with a one-timer. Makar would kind of whiff on the initial shot, and would bounce around a bit and come out to Nathan MacKinnon. That whiff of the initial shot caused a bit of a breakdown in front of the Wild net, but Lehkonen was able to maintain his net-front space. MacKinnon would find Lehkonen right in the slot with a nifty little backhand pass, and Lehkonen wasted no time burying that puck.
Then, MacKinnon would extend Colorado’s lead to 2-0 at the 8:38 mark. This play would initially start back in the Avalanche’s own end with Minnesota pressuring for a goal. Makar managed to get his stick in the way to disrupt Minnesota’s play and kicked the puck out slightly to Drouin. Drouin would then find MacKinnon, who had already started to build up speed in the defensive zone. He would cut through the neutral zone, get around a defender, head towards the net, and we’ve all seen how that movie ends by this point.
This was touched on in the game preview for tonight, but Colorado’s penalty kill could not be as bad as it was last game if they wanted to win tonight. And well, things didn’t look pretty to start, to say the least. Minnesota would tie the game at 2-2 before the first period was done with two power play goals. First, at the 10:14 mark, Kirill Kaprizov would get the Wild on the board. Kaprizov would start with the puck behind the Colorado net after Alexandar Georgiev would make an initial save. Kaprizov would work the puck back in front of the net, and Georgiev made a strong push to get back over and make the initial save on Kaprizov, but he managed to bang it home ultimately.
After that, at the 19:40 mark, Matt Boldy would convert once again for the Wild on the power play late in the period. Mats Zuccarello would get this puck from Kaprizov to the right of the Avalanche net. Zuccarello would then throw the puck out in front, and Colorado looked a little lackadaisical in front of their own net, so Boldy was able to get into the crease and redirect the puck to tie the game.
Second Period
The story of the first period was special teams, and the start of the second was no different. Both teams got power plays to start this period, and it would be the Avs to get the go-ahead goal at even strength at the 6:15 mark. Colorado had a couple of chances prior to this goal, but this play would start with Devon Toews feeding a puck off to Makar. And of course, Makar is who he is, so he went roaming a little bit at the top of the offensive zone, ripped a wrist shot on the net, and beat Filip Gustavsson clean.
MacKinnon would get in on the fun again for his second of the night and goal number 50 on the year. Honestly, there’s nothing really that fancy about this play at all. Toews would gather the puck in Colorado’s defensive zone and get it up and out to Drouin in the neutral zone. In that moment that Drouin got the puck, MacKinnon would start building up some speed in the neutral zone himself. Drouin would find him with a backhand pass, MacKinnon just blows by the Minnesota defense all on his own, and similarly to the first goal, it doesn’t exactly take a rocket scientist to figure out what happens from there.
And while we’re on the topic of MacKinnon, what else can you say? The dude has been on an absolute tear all year long, and tonight was no different. At the 19:08 mark, MacKinnon would complete the hat-trick before the second period was up. If there is one thing that Lehkonen certainly is not, it’s lazy, and he’s the one who starts this play. Lehkonen would engage in a battle for the puck along the boards with a Wild player. He would win that battle, MacKinnon would build up speed, and Lehkonen would chip the puck out to him. From there, MacKinnon would blow past the Minnesota defense, and we’ve seen how this exact scenario ends two previous times tonight. What else can you say, he’s just in a league of his own.
Third Period
The third period ended up being kind of boring, but from Colorado’s side of things, boring was exactly how you probably wanted this period to go. The excitement from MacKinnon’s hat-trick seemed to come back to earth during this period, but there was still some action as both teams each took penalties. After giving up two power-play goals in the first period, the Avs’ penalty kill was successful during this period, keeping the score at 5-2 in Colorado’s favor.
Yeti Takeaways
Just to talk about the obvious positive first, Nathan MacKinnon, have yourself a night. Watching him play at this caliber night in and night out is just so incredibly special. He ultimately ended up with four points on the night, adding an assist on Lehkonen’s goal as well as the hat-trick. After a first period where the Avs probably deserved a bit of better fate than heading into the locker room tied, perhaps your team’s biggest star player goes to work, and all it took him was 20 minutes to score two goals and put this game away for the Avs. Obviously, you need depth scoring night in and night out, especially as we get closer and closer to the playoffs, but when the chips are down, or when your team maybe deserves a better fate than what it got, you need your stars to be able to flip that switch and get your team back in it. And that is exactly what MacKinnon was able to do here tonight.
This was touched on in the game preview for tonight and earlier in this recap, but if Colorado had any hope of winning this game, they needed their penalty kill to take a significant step forward from their last game against the Dallas Stars. And, while it certainly wasn’t perfect, the penalty kill did manage to hold up in this game, especially in the later periods. To think back to the Dallas game, it just seemed like once the penalty kill was falling apart, there was no stopping those breakdowns. Tonight, it was kind of a 180-degree turnaround, as although the penalty kill gave up two goals to let the Wild tie this game in the first, they managed to get back to their habits and play that made them so successful as a penalty-killing unit a little bit ago. You certainly need to see more performances like that from your penalty kill, but tonight was certainly a step in the right direction, and ultimately looked much better compared to how they looked against Dallas.
Next on the Mountain
Colorado welcomes the Winnipeg Jets to town on April 13 for a matinee matchup. The puck drops at 2:00 p.m. MT.