LOS ANGELES — The Avalanche cracked the code of the Kings exactly as expected: without a point for Nathan MacKinnon or Mikko Rantanen, and without Cale Makar or Bo Byram even in the lineup.
Denis Malgin scored twice, Brad Hunt netted the go-ahead goal early in the third period and the Avalanche overcame ugly stretches of hockey to eek out a 4-3 win over the Kings on Saturday.
The Avs (47-24-6) were outshot 40-23 by Los Angeles, the last remaining team in the Western Conference that they hadn’t beaten this season. But the depth scoring showed up at crunch time in the division race, right after consecutive games in which MacKinnon’s and Rantanen’s individual milestones stole the show.
After Dallas topped Vegas in a shootout, Colorado needed the win to remain tied at 102 points atop the division. The Avs still lead the Stars by point percentage with a game in hand — four remaining to Dallas’ three.
Malgin had gone eight consecutive games (and 12 of 13) without a goal. Hunt’s was his fourth of the season, snapping a 23-game drought at the NHL level for the Colorado Eagles captain. And Alex Newhook ended his own 20-game drought on a second-period breakaway.
The five Avalanche players on the ice for the go-ahead goal were guilty of Colorado’s worst shift of the game a period earlier. With Makar still injured and Byram out sick, Hunt and Kurtis MacDermid composed the third defensive pairing in Los Angeles. Those two and the third forward line — Andrew Cogliano, Lars Eller and Logan O’Connor — got stuck in the defensive zone for an eternity before they were finally able to return to the bench. The Kings capitalized on the momentum by scoring soon after.
But early in the third, Eller won a faceoff, and Hunt unleashed his slap shot from the blue line. It’s the strength of his game. It broke a 2-2 tie.
The Avs looked out of sorts for two periods without half of their defensemen. Los Angeles outshot them 18-4 through first intermission and 32-11 through second. Colorado’s power play, which struggled with zone entries last time against the Kings, was stifled again on the usual drop play to Nathan MacKinnon. When it tried something new, swinging a pass across the ice behind the blue line to Mikko Rantanen, the Kings kept hounding the puck and turned it into a 2-on-0 short-handed breakaway. Goaltender Alexandar Georgiev rectified the situation.
Yet somehow, at one point during those head-spinning 40 minutes, the Avs led 2-0. In the first 2:30 of the second period, puck luck provided them with a cushion they seemed destined to immediately give up. Malgin fired an off-target shot that deflected off the end boards, off the top of the net, off Pheonix Copley’s back and into his goal. Then a King falling led to Newhook’s breakaway.
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