The Avalanche is back to its winning ways after more than two weeks without playing a game.
Colorado rallied for a 4-2 victory Sunday at Ball Arena, overcoming a two-goal deficit that mirrored its sluggish start. Forward Logan O’Connor scored the game-winning goal with 71 seconds left in regulation. Colorado — in action for the first time since Dec. 16 due to COVID-19 pauses — extended its home winning streak to nine games.
The Avalanche (18-8-2) travels Tuesday to face Chicago.
“Scoring didn’t come easy for us tonight,” coach Jared Bednar said. “I love the stick-to-itiveness to our group to just kind of keep at it, and keep at it, dig out of the hole and eventually get the win.”
On Sunday, the Ducks flew ahead early with a rebound goal via forward Sam Carrick past Avalanche goalie Darcy Kuemper just 1:55 into the game. It sucked the energy from a once-raucous Ball Arena crowd. Anaheim went up 2-0 in the second period on a power-play chance. The Avs were 16 seconds away from earning a kill when Ducks defenseman Cam Fowler re-directed the puck and beat Kuemper.
“First period, we didn’t execute really well,” Bednar said. “There were a few (poor) decisions but then also just mis-execution. We turned the puck over a little bit and they were coming back on us.”
Thatap when Colorado flipped the script.
The next Avalanche power-play opportunity resulted in a Devon Toews snipe (fed by Mikko Rantanen and Nazem Kadri) to make it 2-1 closing the second period. Toews has five goals this season.
Ducks goalie John Gibson was phenomenal with a number of impressive saves. But Avalanche captain Gabe Landeskog tied the game less than four minutes into the third period with a power-play goal. Then O’Connor put Colorado ahead for good on a breakaway assisted by Nathan MacKinnon. Rantanen added an open-net goal to close it out.
“(Gibson) is a big body and uses those angles well,” O’Connor said. “You’ve got to get traffic in front. We had a bunch of net battles there that we could have capitalized on. You’ve just got to try and elevate the puck.”
A 16-day gap in between games allowed the Avalanche to regain nearly full roster health upon return to play. Colorado has only four players on its injury report: Jacob MacDonald (upper-body), Stefan Matteau (lower-body), Ryan Murray (lower-body) and Val Nichushkin (upper-body). The team is fully removed from the NHL’s health and safety protocol list for COVID-19.
Avs defenseman Bo Byram returned to the ice Sunday for the first time since Dec. 1 after the 20-year-old rookie dealt with a series of concussion-related injuries. Byram finished with 18:35 in ice time and no points.
“As the game went on, (Byram) got more involved. No major errors on his part,” Bednar said. “He managed the puck pretty well. It was a pretty simple game from what we’ve seen from him. That’s to be expected with the time that he’s missed. I think that will come back to him here quickly, especially getting into some games now.”
