The Colorado Avalanche kept Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl to a point each in the overtime loss to the Edmonton Oilers.
DENVER – As expected, the tight matchup between the Colorado Avalanche and Edmonton Oilers was an exciting one, of what looked like a playoff game.
Ben Meyers scored the lone goal for the Avalanche in the 2-1 overtime loss to the Oilers Tuesday night at Ball Arena.
The Avalanche came out of the gate energized and kept it up throughout the contest. Meyers scored the first goal of the game at 4:52 but the Oilers came right back 36 seconds later to tie it up.
Both teams played physically and disciplined in the first. The second and third periods were scoreless as the teams played a very evenly-matched contest.
Devon Toews got a double minor for high-sticking Zach Hyman, which drew blood, at 14:46 in the second, but the Avalanche killed off the four minutes against the number one power play team in the league.
“I liked their game. I thought we were engaged right away, played hard,” coach Jared Bednar said after the game. “Pretty tight-checking game for the most part. I think the high danger chances were low … I thought we did a good job on the checking side of it, and it was a pretty good hockey game.”
The teams remained even with their checking and kept it a tied game to take it to overtime. Bowen Byram got called for hooking Connor McDavid at 1:09 into OT and Evan Bouchard capitalized on the man advantage putting it past Alexandar Georgiev to win the game.
“I thought we played hard. [We] killed off a lot of big penalties, so that was good, but we couldn’t find a way to finish it out.
“The point is big. We would’ve liked two, but I thought we played pretty well. We’ll learn from this game and get ready for Winnipeg coming up here,” Byram said.
Georgiev made 38 saves against some heavy shooters to keep the Avalanche in the game while Nathan MacKinnon and Mikko Rantanen had a combined 12 shots on goal.
“It was a good game, they’re a good team. They are where they are for a reason. But I thought we played a pretty solid game throughout.
“I think we hopefully get some players back as we go here and get some guys that we’re missing that are big parts of our team, and we should feel good maybe coming after that game,” Andrew Cogliano said.
Avalanche still finding a way
Cale Makar remains out with a lower-body injury, in which Byram picked up a lot of the slack playing more than 24 minutes, about three fewer than Toews who was on the ice the most.
“This team’s scrappy. They are, they’re a resilient group. They grind, they work, they find a different way to win every night,” Bednar said. "They’re just a competitive group, they got lots of heart. That’s a good way to describe this team. They’ve gone through their fair share of adversity at this point and we’re still hanging around trying to wrap up the division.”
Bednar was not disappointed with his team and appreciated that it was a full team effort. Unfortunately, the result didn’t go the way they wanted it but he felt it was a good game overall.
“We’ve been missing guys all year, you gotta find a way to win without them. I thought we gave ourselves a really good chance tonight,” Bednar said. “This one didn’t go in our favor but I think the way we competed, I thought our guys were focused and dialed in for this one.”