In their first game this season without Nathan MacKinnon, who was described as week-to-week with a lower-body injury by coach Jared Bednar, the Colorado Avalanche held on for a 2-1 win over the Minnesota Wild.
J.T. Compher slid into MacKinnon’s spot on the top line Tuesday and was a full-service player for Colorado. He played a season-high 18:48 and dropped the gloves with Kyle Rau after a hit on Cale Makar during the second period.
“Obviously he’s a very special player and not a single person can fill that void,” Makar said of MacKinnon. “I think everyone as a collective group just steps up and plays the role we need them to.
“Overall tonight, we played a relatively consistent game and just kind of stuck to it.”
Tyson Jost made the most of his upgrade to the third line and was double-shifted. Sheldon Dries, Kiefer Sherwood and Jacob MacDonald filled in well. The Avalanche rolled with the punches despite dealing with injuries to several major players.
That fight, however, wound up stinging the home team. Compher was handed an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty and the Wild solved the Colorado penalty kill for the first time since the Kings did it Jan. 21, a span of 24 straight successful kills. Kirill Kaprizov pushed his way to the slot and fired the puck in.
Philipp Grubauer was patient and positionally sound before and after. He turned away 27 shots.
Former Denver Pioneer Logan O’Connor opened the scoring for the second time in three games, taking the puck away from the boards and flicking a shot at the net. It appeared to hit a stick and deflected in.
“Not gonna see too many pretty goals, I think, from our line. We’re just trying to muck it up a bit,” O’Connor said. “We’ll leave those pretty ones to (Mikko) Rantanen and Cale and whatnot.”
In the mess after a second-period faceoff, Valeri Nichushkin batted in a low rebound of a Joonas Donskoi shot. It flew right back out of the net so it took a beat for the goal light to come on, but it did and it counted.
Makar once again put on a skating clinic, duping Ryan Hartman and sending him to the ice, among other circulated clips.
The Avalanche never built on that narrow lead, and got a gutsy effort along with a little luck in preserving it. Carson Soucy shot wide on an open and inviting net in the late stages.
“Obviously there’s some extra ice time that’s getting distributed now with the guys that we have out of the lineup,” Bednar said of the bottom six forwards, half of which are call-ups.
“I think some of those guys are eager to prove that they deserve more ice time and they’re making the decisions tough.”
This content was originally published here.
