DALLAS — When the Avalanche lost Artturi Lehkonen for an indefinite amount of time with a neck injury, it was at a tenuous point in the early part of this season.
The Avs lost that game on a late goal by the Seattle Kraken. They got embarrassed the next time out by the St. Louis Blues, which led to some of the most biting critiques Jared Bednar has offered in his time as the club’s coach.
It was a good time for Valeri Nichushkin to get on a roll.
Nichushkin has now scored in each of the three games since the bludgeoning by the Blues. He has four goals in that span, including a tying goal early in the third period Saturday night at American Airlines Center against the Dallas Stars.
Mikko Rantanen and Andrew Cogliano scored 11 seconds apart later in the period and the Avalanche left this arena on Victory Avenue with its best victory of the season — a 6-3 triumph after yielding the first three goals of the contest.
“(Nichushkin) was all over the puck,” Bednar said. “Getting to the interior of the ice on his own, battling off checks off the walls, coming up with pucks in the slot, driving into the slot. He was excellent.”
Even before scoring the Avs’ third goal, Nichushkin was having a strong game. He was a noticeable positive, even when the team was not playing well. He’s replaced Lehkonen on the top power-play unit and found the spot next to Nathan MacKinnon and Rantanen on the top line much to his liking.
“He’s a beast,” said Fredrick Olofsson, who was a few feet away from Nichushkin on his tying goal. “He’s hungry on pucks. I don’t even know how much he weighs, but he seems impossible to move out there. When we had that shift with him, I was like, ‘I’m just going to give it you, create some space for you and let you do your thing.’ He was all over it there when we were making the comeback.”
In the process, the Avs have now won three straight games and grabbed a significant one against the club they are most likely to battle with at the top of the Central Division this season.
“The way we’ve been committing to the defensive game the last three games, and we didn’t quit when we went down,” Rantanen said. “We kind of faded when Vegas got a lead on us, when St. Louis got a lead on us. Today, at 3-0 I felt like we were outplaying them still. We just stuck with it, and played a really good third period. The second was pretty good too, but they had two shots in the third before they pulled the goalie.
“It was really good, overall commitment.”
One developing theme from the first 15 games: When the Avs get rolling, they can get to a level of play that makes them look close to unbeatable. But also on most of the nights where they don’t find their “A” game, they can look surprisingly bad.
A few minutes into the second period, it looked like this could be another night where Colorado lost the plot. The Stars grabbed a 3-0 lead early the second, and some of the issues that dogged the Avs in the blowout losses looked to be a problem again.
Dallas was creating better chances, in part because the Stars are one of the best teams in the league and one of the few that is as talented and skilled as the Avalanche. But the Avs were also making mistakes — namely too many turnovers with the puck and some issues with covering guys in dangerous areas in front of goalie Alexandar Georgiev.
The second half of the second period was a huge step in the right direction, both in the course of making this a competitive game and the bigger-picture process. Colorado had not clawed back into the game until Miles Wood scored at 13:27 of the second, collecting a great pass from Ross Colton and driving hard to the net.
Wood fell as the puck went across the line, and there was contact with Dallas goalie Jake Oettinger. The Stars challenged for goalie interference, but the goal was upheld, so Colorado had a power play because of the failed challenge.
That chance with the extra man did not go well — there was almost shorthanded goal from a miscommunication, but Georgiev made a huge save to keep it at 3-1. The Avs did get another chance with the man advantage later in the period, and Ryan Johansen redirected a shot from Cale Makar to make it a one-goal game.
It was Makar’s 200th career assist, making him the fastest defensemen in league history to reach that milestone. He got there in 254 games, nine faster than Quinn Hughes.
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