
The Colorado Avalanche, for the most part, played with a lack of intensity except for one player who had a two-point game.
Nathan MacKinnon had another multi-point game with a goal and an assist but it wasn't enough in the Avalanche's 4-2 loss to the Winnipeg Jets.
Colorado came into the game lackluster and head coach Jared Bednar acknowledged the lack of energy from his team.
With just seconds left in the first period, Devon Toews turned the puck over in the defensive zone which ended up on the stick of Adam Lowry who beat Alexandar Georgiev for the first goal of the game.
"The start of the game for me — too safe, just too vanilla. I felt like we lacked the intensity and sort of urgency," Bednar said after the game. "Intensity on the offensive side that we need to create scoring chances and urgency on the defensive side ... to really defend hard."
Less than 30 seconds into the second period, Cale Makar lost his footing and missed intercepting the puck — which slid around the boards to Nikolaj Ehlers. Kyle Connor grabbed the pass and fired it past Georgiev's high side.
"I wasn't one of the guys that helped tonight, just wasn't one of my nights. It's just sometimes puck's just not going your way," Makar said.
Bednar said he liked how his group pushed at the end of the second period but the overall effort wasn't good. The Avs had a brief two-man advantage early in the third period but didn't capitalize on it.
"A lot of it's on me, whether I just wasn't getting shots through and I wasn't executing passes. Yeah I take a lot of the blame for that one," Makar said.
Sam Malinski earned his first NHL point on MacKinnon's goal. He made a tape-to-tape pass to Devon Toews who slid it over to MacKinnon flying down the lane at 2:30 into the second.
Josh Morrissey ripped a shot from the left circle with Malinski in front of the net past Georgiev. The Avs netminder physically showed frustration after the goal.
"Yeah that's my bad. Like I was frustrated. Like it was my guy who kind of jumped in front of me, shouldn't be frustrated. Take the game as it goes and not worry about that," Georgiev said.
Joel Kiviranta popped one in the net — that wasn't initially called but after review was deemed a goal — with 30 seconds left in the second period to make it a one goal game.
Connor put one in an empty net to finish the game 4-2, snapping the Avalanche's five-game home win streak.
“We weren’t skating as hard and working as hard as we needed to and just being a little smarter," Ryan Johansen said. "I think the bottom line is though, we were probably at 75% tonight and that’s not going to cut it.”
MacKinnon extended his consecutive point streak to 10 games and his season-opening home point streak to 12. This is the seventh time in his career he's hit double-digits for consecutive point games. Joe Sakic and Peter Stastny both did so 10 times and Michel Goulet achieved it seven times in the franchise's history.
It was also MacKinnon's 223rd career multi-point game — which broke his tie with Peter Forsberg. He now owns the fourth place spot for most in franchise history.
The Avs face off against the Philadelphia Flyers on Saturday night at Ball Arena.