Colorado played a solid game for the first two periods and then its energy tank was depleted in the third which contributed to the loss.
The lack of energy on the second half of a back-to-back caught up to the Colorado Avalanche in the third period in the 4-1 loss to the Los Angeles Kings Sunday night.
Colorado got on the board first with a goal from Josh Manson — his third point of the season — and held the lead through the second period.
Kings forward Quinton Byfield tipped one in on a shot from Mikey Anderson in front of the net past Alexandar Georgiev to tie it up 9:03 into the second period.
Byfield grabbed a saucer pass from Adrian Kempe to slide it to the back of the net for the game-winner at 6:34 in the third period.
The Avs ran out of gas by that point with Trevor Moore and Drew Doughty sealing Colorado's fate with a third and fourth goal respectively.
"We knew it was going to be tough sledding coming into today ... You could tell which team was the rested team in the third period because they started putting the heat on us making it tougher for us to move up the ice," head coach jared Bednar said after the loss. "They kind of took the game over there."
Cale Makar was out with a lower-body injury, according to Bednar, but it's unknown how long he'll be out of the lineup.
Georgiev, who was rested not having played the previous night, made 34 saves to give the Avalanche a chance throughout the game.
"I thought he (Georgiev) was really good. They did a better job at getting traffic in front of him and kind of trying to hunt down some rebounds even though our guys competed hard in the blue paint to try and clear some of those," Bednar said. "We definitely made some mistakes with the puck, and when we did, he looked sharp, he looked solid tonight."
The Avs played three games in four days on the road and return home for a five-game homestand — which begins against the Anaheim Ducks for the final matchup between the teams on Tuesday at Ball Arena.