The Colorado Avalanche got into a groove and played their game which resulted in a 6-4 win over the Seattle Kraken Saturday night.
SEATTLE – Five Colorado Avalanche players had a multi-point game and Mikko Rantanen earned three points in the 6-4 win of Game 3 in the Stanley Cup playoffs.
Andrew Cogliano returned to the ice in Game 3, but Valeri Nichushkin was nowhere near it, as coach Jared Bednar said he is out for personal reasons.
Nathan MacKinnon, Artturi Lehkonen, Devon Toews and Cale Makar all notched two points. Bowen Byram, Evan Rodrigues, J.T. Compher and Alex Newhook all had one.
Seattle scored first in the contest, as it has in the last two. Justin Schultz shot from just past the blue line and Jaden Schwartz backhanded it in past Alexandar Georgiev at 6:08 in the first.
“Mental strength, I think it’s really big when you go down early like we did again, and we just stick with it. It didn’t faze us, you know,” Rantanen said. “Some things maybe could get, go into themselves and kind of start playing scared. But we just stay with it and we know it's 60 minutes or more it takes to beat us. So good team effort.”
MacKinnon and Compher gave Colorado the lead after the first and Makar put them up 3-1 at 4:33 in the second period.
Seattle scored two goals within 19 seconds when the Avalanche struggled with puck control and clearing their defensive zone in the second.
“I think it’s that mental toughness. I think there’s a lot of guys on this team that don’t get affected, especially obviously they scored two quick there,” Makar said. “For us to be able to just like kind of settle it down, bounce back, that’s just a show of a lot of mature individuals. Hopefully we can continue to do that cause when you have one guy like that at least, hopefully it rubs off on everybody else. I think that’s a huge key for us.”
The Avalanche were able to shake off the quick pair of goals from the Kraken and get back on their game.
“This process isn’t easy, it’s a hard road. You can’t get too emotional and attached to things,” MacKinnnon said. “After the second we regrouped and just thought we were playing a good game to keep it going and see what happens.”
What happened was Rantanen scored two goals and MacKinnon put in another in the third period.
“Our game is to try things, be creative, obviously play smart. But you know we need to play with some swagger and we’ve definitely gotten that back but know things can change quickly so we got to forget this game and get ready for Game 4,” MacKinnnon said.
MacKinnon did what MacKinnon does
Bednar said MacKinnon did what he expected him to when it’s a big game like this. He said he played with speed and competitiveness and was really tough to check when he got the puck.
“I don’t care about the score five minutes into it, 10 minutes into it, 59 minutes into it. I care about the score at the end of the game,” Bednar said. “I think we have a belief that like if we keep doing some of the things we’re doing, we’re going to have our success.”
Colorado did succeed in keeping their game physical and tight and winning faceoffs to create scoring chances. The Avalanche know the Kraken are a tough team to beat so they need to remain on top of their game back at Climate Pledge Arena on Monday night.