The Carolina Hurricanes had a weird travel schedule because of the weather and played their third-string goalie.
That doesn’t make what the Colorado Avalanche did to one of the best teams in the NHL this season during a 10-minute stretch in a 6-4 win Saturday night at Ball Arena any less impressive. The Avs, still missing five key forwards, looked far off the pace against the red-hot Hurricanes for the first 25 minutes of this game.
Then Colorado’s star power took over, producing one of the most impressive avalanches of offense anyone is going to create against Carolina this season. The totality of the scoring spree was five goals in nine minutes and 36 seconds.
“It’s a lot of fun watching those guys work,” Avalanche goalie Alexandar Georgiev said. “When we’re buzzing, it’s a good feeling.”
Down 2-0 and being outshot 17-8, the Avs were on the penalty kill and in danger and being run out of their own rink.
Then Cale Makar intercepted a pass near the right faceoff circle in his own end, skated to the other end of the ice and blasted a slap shot past Carolina goaltender Spencer Martin at 9:13 of the second. The typically mild-mannered Makar uncorked an emphatic celebration that ended with him yelling, “Come on!”
His teammates listened.
Sam Malinski scooped up the rebound of a Nathan MacKinnon rush shot and flipped a backhanded shot past Martin at 10:57 of the period to tie the game. Malinski took a penalty and Martin Necas nudged Carolina back in front with a power-play goal, but the Avalanche stars continued to dominate.
MacKinnon scored his prettiest goal of the season at 15:49 to even it at 3-3. The reigning MVP collected the puck in the neutral zone with some incredible body control, then shook Shayne Gostisbehere with a juke move on a 2-on-1 that became a 1-on-0 for his seventh goal of the season.
“To not lose too much momentum and explode out of that one-on-one, then to look the ‘D’ off a bit, it was a great shot obviously, but that was an impressive goal,” Avs coach Jared Bednar said. “You could just see that those top guys were felling it.
“As a coach, without killing those guys, you have to be able to recognize when you catch a little momentum and you can keep putting them out there.”
Artturi Lehkonen should have scored on a great setup from MacKinnon to give Colorado the lead. He pulled his shot wide of a wide-open net. Lehkonen made up for it seconds later by tipping a Mikko Rantanen shot past Martin at 16:42.
Carolina challenged for goalie interference, which was incorrect and became a Hurricanes penalty. Then after another penalty, the Avs eventually added a fifth goal of the period on a shot from Rantanen at 18:49. It was a bit of a scramble, but Rantanen eventually collected the puck and just ripped one by Martin.
“We talked in the first intermission that we’ve got to play together a little bit more,” Rantanen said. “I felt like we were a little spread out in the first and they were coming up with a lot of pucks. Last 40 minutes, we were five guys playing together more and playing more connected, which led to playing more with the puck and more o-zone time.”
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MacKinnon had three points during the surge to retake the NHL scoring lead from Minnesota’s Kirill Kaprizov. He added a fourth on Rantanen’s second of the night into an empty net with 49.9 seconds to ice the win.
The final save percentage won’t look great, but Georgiev was the team’s best player in the first period and had to make several key saves against a team that created 13 scoring chances in the opening 20 minutes, according to Natural Stat Trick.
“I felt like that game could have gotten away from us in the first 10 minutes, and it didn’t,” Bednar said. “That was all because of (Georgiev). He just gave our team a chance to come around. That’s what we need from our goaltending.”
The Avs are still without key forwards but should get a couple of them back this week. They believe Valeri Nichushkin will play Nov. 15 against the Capitals, assuming his full reinstatement hearing with the league goes as they hope. And Jonathan Drouin could return before that from an upper-body injury.
Reinforcements are much needed, but for a 10-minute stretch Saturday night, the Avs served notice to the league’s best that underestimating their star power remains a significant mistake.
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