Yakov Trenin had a great game against his former team. Nathan MacKinnon has great games against everyone.
Toss in a great relief effort from backup goaltender Justus Annunen, and the Colorado Avalanche collected another wild comeback victory Saturday afternoon. The 7-4 win against the Nashville Predators also clinched a playoff berth for the Avalanche. It’s the seventh straight postseason berth for the Avs.
“That’s the goal, right? Get in the playoffs and give yourselves a chance,” Avs coach Jared Bednar said. “It just shows the dedication and hard work that all the guys are putting into every season and trying to keep improving from the season before. Yep, it feels good.”
MacKinnon had two goals and two assists to start a new home point scoring streak, and at least temporarily reclaim the NHL scoring lead from Tampa Bay’s Nikita Kucherov and Edmonton’s Connor McDavid. Trenin had his best game since arriving from Nashville in a trade before the deadline, including the game-winning goal against his old mates.
The Predators scored four times on 13 shots against Avs starter Alexandar Georgiev. Nashville’s fourth goal came 57 seconds into the second period and gave the Predators a 4-2 lead.
Georgiev was assessed an unsportsmanlike penalty and pulled from the game after the goal. Annunen stopped all 13 shots he faced in the second as the Avalanche mounted its comeback, and then nine more in the final 20 minutes to seal the victory.
“I still feel like we could have done a couple more things to be better in front of (Georgiev), but (Annunen) came in and he was awesome,” Cale Makar said. “He was a brick wall for us.”
It started after Nashville defenseman Ryan McDonagh was assessed a major penalty and game misconduct on his former Tampa Bay teammate, Ross Colton. Artturi Lehkonen scored on a one-timer that he didn’t get all of during the ensuing five-minute power play to make it 4-3.
Makar scored the Avs’ third power-play goal of the game with 1:35 remaining in the second to level the score. Trenin and Brandon Duhaime outmuscled Filip Forsberg to win a loose puck battle, and then Trenin snapped one past Kevin Lankinen to give Colorado the lead and score on his former teammates with 29 seconds remaining in the period.
“Today’s game was like a playoff for me,” Trenin said.
MacKinnon made it a 6-4 lead for the Avs with his 46th goal of the year early in the third period. The Ball Arena crowd unleashed its loudest “M-V-P” chant of the season afterward.
The physicality in this game was apparent from the opening minutes of the first period. These are two of the hottest teams in the league over the past month, and both are chasing a playoff position — Nashville wants to hunt down Winnipeg for third in the Central Division, while Colorado is trying to track down Dallas for the division title and potentially the No. 1 overall seed in the Western Conference.
There’s a possibility that these clubs could see each other again three weeks from now to start the 2024 Stanley Cup Playoffs, and it felt like there was some message-sending at times.
Nashville won each of their first two meetings at Bridgestone Arena. The Predators took the first one in dramatic fashion — they scored twice in the final minute to tie and win the game. The second was a 5-1 blowout March 2, and that was the last truly poor outing for the Avalanche.
MacKinnon assisted on both of Colorado’s first-period goals. He found Jonathan Drouin at the far post early in the period.
Casey Mittelstadt, playing on the top power play because Valeri Nichushkin missed a second-straight game with a lower-body injury, stuffed one in late in the period. MacKinnon added an empty-net goal with 3:50 left to give him 47 goals and 127 points with eight games left.
MacKinnon already owns the Denver-based record for points in a season. The overall franchise record is 139 points, set by Peter Stastny in 1981-82.
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