One team — the — came in with 50 wins, the most in the NHL, and was riding a five-game winning streak.
The other — the Avalanche — came in with 52 losses, the most in the NHL, and was mired in a six-game losing streak.
Guess which one won? And, no, this isn’t a trick question.
Although it becomes tempting during horrible seasons to lump all losses together as rotten, unimpressive showings, this wasn’t one of those. While dropping its seventh in a row, the Avalanche actually looked as if it belonged on the same ice with the Capitals on Wednesday night while losing 5-3 in one of the more entertaining hockey games at the this season.
“Our second period wasn’t that great,” said rookie winger , who had his 17th goal of the season to open the Colorado scoring, tying Matt Duchene for the team lead. “But the first period and the third period were great. We had chances to win the game or at least tie the game there at the end.”
Matt Nieto and also scored for the Avalanche, with MacKinnon’s bringing Colorado to within 4-3 at 4:29 of the third period. His 16th goal of the season came on a skate through Capitals defensemen Dmitry Orlov and Matt Niskanen and then a terrific backhander to beat Washington backup goalie Philipp Grubauer — the kind of play the Avalanche had hoped would come more often from the top overall choice in the 2013 draft.
John Carlson, Jay Beagle, Marcus Johansson and Evgeny Kuznetsov had the goals for the Capitals, who led 4-1 before the Avalanche came back — but not all the way, despite putting on more pressure in the final minutes. Ultimately, Lars Eller added an empty-netter for the Capitals with 1:22 left. Alex Ovechkin and Nicklas Backstrom skated through pointless nights for the Capitals, but Washington was 2-for-3 on the power play. stopped 30 of 34 shots in the Colorado net.
“You know, they outplayed us in the second and that’s what cost us,” MacKinnon said. “We gave them lots of odd-man rushes. Obviously, it’s nice to play with the best team in the league, or one of the best teams in the league in the third and play well, but it’s still a loss.”
J.T. Compher centered and , who didn’t register a point for the seventh game in a row.
“I think if we had played like we played in the third period for 60 minutes, we might have had a better result,” Compher said. “We’ve had some struggles in the third period and tonight we were ready to go in the third and it showed. We battled our way back.”
Said Avalanche coach : “That’s a really good team that comes at you, every line, every shift. There were portions of the game where they took it to us and there were portions of the game where we took it to them. … But we answered back a little bit, pushed back, got a couple of goals, made it interesting. Unfortunately, we didn’t finish the job 6-on-5.”
Swiss winger Sven Andrighetto, playing on the line with MacKinnon and Rantanen, had two assists, giving him five goals and six assists in 13 games since coming to Colorado from Montreal in the trade for Andreas Martinsen on March 1.
The game drew a crowd of 13,820, with perhaps a third decked out in Capitals red, giving the Pepsi Center a similar look as when the Blackhawks or Red Wings visit Denver.
The Avalanche next faces St. Louis at home Friday night, and there is a possibility that Tyson Jost — the North Dakota freshman center — will be able to suit up and make his NHL debut.
“We’ll do the same thing we did with Compher,” Bednar said. “We’re going to throw him right into the fire here and he’ll center a line for us, we haven’t exactly worked that out yet. … We’re excited to get him in as part of the youth movement. We’re seeing these guys come up, play quality minutes for us and do an admirable job. There’s obviously going to be an adjustment period, but we’re going to get him in and get him as much experience as we possibly can before the end of the season.”
