It certainly wasn’t pretty, but one power play chance and strong goaltending was enough.
Casey Mittelstadt scored with 4:06 remaining and Scott Wedgewood made 32 saves to help the Colorado Avalanche fend off the Pittsburgh Penguins, 4-1, Tuesday night at Ball Arena.
The Penguins, who are in last place in the Atlantic Division and have already moved into seller mode ahead of the trade deadline, outplayed the Avalanche for much of this contest.
“(Wedgewood) was outstanding. We did not move the puck at all,” Avs coach Jared Bednar said. “Turnovers after turnovers into scoring chances against. It was ugly. We had some compete and some guys play really hard to try and cover up some of those mistakes, but we beat up the puck pretty bad tonight.”
The Avs, outside of Wedgewood, had not looked particularly sharp for about 55 minutes before the second power-play unit, with some help from Nathan MacKinnon, found a much-needed goal.
Valeri Nichushkin took a pass from MacKinnon and fed the puck across the slot to Mittelstadt for his 11th goal of the season.
“It was a heck of a pass,” Mittelstadt said. “Put it right on my tape. Made my job easy.”
MacKinnon finished with two assists, while Artturi Lehkonen scored twice, including one of the club’s two empty-netters in the final 68 seconds.
After a sloppy first period and a slow start to the second, the Avs’ top line created a spark with the first goal of the evening. MacKinnon took the puck off the wall behind the Pittsburgh net and snapped a pass into the slot. Lehkonen was there for a one-timer and his 25th goal of the season at 6:36 of the middle period. He added his 26th to seal the win.
The two assists for MacKinnon extended his home point streak to 17 games and gave him 992 for his career. That puts him in a tie with Phil Kessel for 101st in NHL history. He is three points from reaching the top 100 in league history.
Colorado only had 15 shots in the first 40 minutes, and Pittsburgh found an equalizer late in the second. Rickard Rackell deflected Cale Makar’s outlet pass during a breakout, and the Penguins quickly turned that into a tic-tac-toe goal: Sidney Crosby to Bryan Rust and back to Rackell at the right post for a lay-up with 1:56 left.
“Everybody in here wants to be perfect all the time,” Wedgewood said. “It’s never that easy. We hold ourselves accountable. Obviously, we put ourselves in position to win the third period and went out and did it.”
Defenseman Ryan Lindgren made his Avs debut after Colorado added him in a trade Saturday. Jimmy Vesey, who was also part of the deal with the New York Rangers, was a healthy scratch. Lindgren became the 43rd player to play for the Avs this season, which ties the club record since moving to Denver.
“He was solid,” Bednar said. “As far as puck play goes and defending hard in the zone, I thought he was our best D tonight. It’s not flashy. He’s not going to wow you, but he’s effective getting things done.”
Footnotes: Josh Manson participated in the morning skate, but remained out of the lineup. Bednar said he is close to returning after not playing since Feb. 4 with a lower-body injury. … The Avs welcomed Layne Matechuk, a player on the Humboldt Broncos when the team’s bus crashed in 2018, to drop the ceremonial first puck before the game. Matechuk suffered a severe brain injury and extensive skull fractures in the crash. Both his lungs collapsed. He spent a month in a coma, followed by another five months in the hospital. MacKinnon and Crosby — two of Matechuk’s favorite players — participated in the ceremony.
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