Nathan MacKinnon earns 500th career assist in 3-2 win over Ducks

The Avalanche's lines looked quite different but managed a win despite missing some key players.

Nathan MacKinnon had a three-point night and earned his 500th career assist in the Avalanche's 3-2 victory over the Anaheim Ducks Tuesday night. 

Despite missing Cale Makar, Valeri Nichushkin and Andrew Cogliano, Colorado played a fairly solid 60 minutes — minus a couple of unnecessary penalties in the third period — with the changes to the lineup. 

Kurtis MacDermid scored his second goal of the season 1:40 into the game off a pass from MacKinnon.

At 2:17 in the second period, MacKinnon wristed one past Ducks goaltender John Gibson's short side on a saucer pass from Jonathan Drouin. Although MacKinnon and Drouin have played on the same line together in previous games, it was the first with Logan O'Connor on the right wing. 

"OC (Logan O'Connor), you know what you're getting, it's an easy guy to read off of and obviously Jo (Drouin) same thing — just always trying to find me open ice and trying to get some zone entries," MacKinnon said after the game. "I thought Mikko (Rantanen) did a great job too, obviously playing with a young kid in Oskar (Olausson) — helped him a lot tonight."

Gibson stopped MacKinnon's backhanded shot but in the scramble in the crease, O'Connor slid it past for the third goal of the game 6:21 into the third period. 

"Once I shot it, for whatever reason, I felt like it wasn't under him and then I just poked around and was fortunate enough to poke it in there," O'Connor said about his goal.  

MacKinnon's assist on O'Connor's goal was the 500th of his career. He also extended his point streak to nine games and home point streak to 11, the third-longest season-opening home point streak in franchise history. 

"In a game like this, when there's new players coming every year and everyone has these expectations for him — I think whenever you can live up to expectations or exceed expectations it's pretty phenomenal and I think he's done that," " Bednar said about MacKinnon's milestone.

Although Tomas Tatar did not end up on the scoresheet, he had a few scoring chances that continue to show his effort but unfortunately no results. Bednar has referred to him as being "snake bit" but said he thought he played his best game so far this season. 

"He's just got to stick with it," Bednar said. "If he keeps playing like that he's going to find a way to chip in."

Alexandar Georgiev made 31 saves to help the Avalanche close out their series with the Ducks 2-0-1 for the season.