LAS VEGAS (AP) — Ivan Barbashev, Mark Stone and Victor Olofsson each scored two goals and the Vegas Golden Knights beat the Colorado Avalanche 8-4 on Wednesday night in the teams’ season opener.
Barbashev also had two assists, linemate Jack Eichel had four and defenseman Shea Theodore added three. Adin Hill finished with 28 saves.
Mikko Rantanen had three goals, while Casey Mittelstadt also scored for the Avalanche. Alexandar Georgiev made 11 saves. Justus Annunen came in for Georgiev and stopped two of the four shots he faced.
Takeaways
Avalanche: As their number one goaltender, Georgiev struggled terribly in allowing five or more goals in a regular-season game for the 34th time in his career. He came into the game with a 4-4-2 mark against Vegas, with a 2.59 goals-against average and .918 save percentage.
Golden Knights: Vegas coach Bruce Cassidy stressed the importance of chemistry with his forwards during training camp, starting with one center and one wing building chemistry before adding a third element once he was confident with the initial pairing. Cassidy seemingly got it right with his top line of Stone, Barbashev and Eichel, as the trio combined for 10 points.
Key moment
After falling behind 1-0 midway through the first period, the Golden Knights wasted no time in tying the game when Olofsson sniped Georgiev from near the bottom of the right circle, firing it short side just over the goalie’s right shoulder.
Key stat
Rantanen’s hat trick was the eighth of his career, and second one of the calendar year. His last was last season in St. Louis on March 19. Five of Rantanen’s eight hat tricks have come on the road.
Up Next
The Avalanche host Columbus on Saturday, while the Golden Knights continue their season-opening three-game homestand by hosting St. Louis on Friday.
Alexander Georgiev wore disheveled hair and a distant stare into nowhere. His helmetless head told a sobering story even before coach Jared Bednar opened his mouth Saturday afternoon.
The Avs are in trouble. Their goalie has blown more saves than the cast of “Baywatch,” and was benched during one of the worst first periods in recent memory. Or any memory.
The final score: Winnipeg 7, Avs 0. The Jets got tacos and the Avs settled for a Denver omelet on their face.
“We didn’t show up,” defenseman Devon Toews said in an eerily-silent locker room. “It was just really bad.”
The Avs framed their matchup with the Jets as a must-win with home ice in the playoffs dangling in the balance. What unfurled can only be described as an unmitigated disaster, a performance so mind-numbingly bad that it raises questions about the Avs’ postseason veracity.
Colorado is set to face the Jets — a lunch pail, hard hat team — in the postseason. The same Jets team who swept the Avs in three games this season, outsourcing them 17-4.
It wasn’t too long ago — like Tuesday — that the Avs looked like they had regrouped and were dancing to the same beat. There was no Mack Trick during this matinee, only a sellout crowd, in between full-throated boos, wondering if it could wave a wand and make the goalie and defensive issues disappear.
“It seemed like with our structure that we didn’t know what we were doing at times,” forward Andrew Cogliano said. “It was mental errors.”
More like a comedy of missteps. Except exactly no one was laughing. Bednar explained that the Avs were beaten to the net, beat on the rush and beat to the boards. A lack of execution happens. Lack of effort is a sin.
“I felt like we got out-competed,” Bednar admitted.
There is also no easy way to say it: Georgiev is in a slump. The 4-0 first-quarter deficit cannot be laid solely on his crease, but his fingerprints were all over this mess. He made a stop with 14:35 remaining in the first period that drew cheers as Brandon Duhaime shoved the Jets’ Alex Iaffollo. It was a fleeting glimpse of intensity and swagger.
Colorado Avalanche head coach Jared Bednar, top center, looks on with assistant coach Ray Bennet, upper right, and Nolan Pratt, upper left, in the second period of an NHL hockey game against the Winnipeg Jets, Saturday, April 13, 2024, in Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)
Then, as fans looked on in disbelief, it was like somebody took the Avs’ batteries out.
Instead of helping out Georgiev, who had been wobbly for weeks, the Avs offered less resistance than a water slide. With the type of pressure that makes palms sweat and heads ache, the Jets pounced. Sean Monahan delivered his 25th goal.
A hiccup? More like a pipe burst. With the Jets on a power play moments later, the Avs’ Josh Manson chased the puck high, leaving him out of position as Gabriel Vilardi clicked the puck into the net for a 2-0 advantage.
With the defense sloppy in front of him, Georgiev dissolved before our eyes, allowing two soft goals before Bednar sat him in favor of Justus Annunen. Four goals on 15 shots in 14 minutes. The Avs made the Jets look like an army of MacKinnons. Embarrassing is an apt description. Georgiev will start Sunday in Las Vegas. It is not a reward, more of a default, the evil of two lessers.
“He didn’t make the big save tonight. He’s grouped in with the rest of them,” Bedndar said. “I didn’t love either one of them. So, we will go back to our starter.”
Given the time, place and stakes, this was the Avs’ worst loss of the season. There’s no hiding from this. The Avs wanted home ice in the first round for a number of reasons, mainly because they have been the NHL’s best home team this season. Saturday mirrored the postseason, hockey at its most unforgiving.
It wasn’t just how the Avs lost, but to whom. The playoffs begin in just over a week. The Avs will face these Jets, and likely start on the road. Goodbye fingernails. Hello, Pepto.
Some will equate this to ski lifts closing on a powder day or Cherry Creek reservoir freezing in August.
Can you blame them? It’s not good.
This team is supposed to provide another deep Stanley Cup run, delivering mouth-agape moments and Blink-182 sing-alongs. Now, there’s concern the playoffs will be another Blink and see you in October. Upstart Seattle dispatched the Avs in the first round last season, a stunning result clouded by Valeri Nichushkin’s absence.
The Jets are better. They treat opponents with personal contempt, guarding their goal like a fang-bearing wolverine. They require patience and discipline to break.
“We got a taste of what it’s going to be like going against them in the playoffs,” Cogliano said. “From a lot of different angles it wasn’t good enough.”
It was so bad that the idea of the Avs showing the Denver Pioneers’ national championship game during the third period seemed reasonable. Desperate chants of “We want a goal!” reverberated throughout Ball Arena.
The Avs have time to figure it out. They boast the type of talent and resume that makes them suited for the task. But what will Saturday’s Goofy on Ice performance do to their psyche?
There is no shame in an awful defeat, even though this looked like a scheduled win with the Jets coming off a victory over Dallas and poised for a letdown at the end of a road trip.
But, Saturday shined a flashlight on growing concerns.
The goal is another Stanley Cup championship. Hard to see that happening with a leaky defense and goalie problem.
TAMPERE, Finland — Mikko Rantanen scored three goals in his native country and the Stanley Cup champion Colorado Avalanche beat the Columbus Blue Jackets 6-3 on Friday night in the NHL’s second visit to Europe this year.
Cale Makar had a goal and an assist, Logan O’Connor and J.T. Compher also scored and Nathan MacKinnon contributed four assists for the Avalanche, who stopped a two-game skid.
Colorado blew a three-goal lead in its previous game, a 5-4 loss to the New York Islanders on Saturday, and allowed Columbus to tie it after taking a 3-0 advantage this time. But Rantanen put the Avs ahead for good in the third period with his second goal.
“Two points are obviously the biggest thing,” Rantanen said, but he added of the hat trick, “I was obviously happy with that too.”
Patrik Laine had a goal and an assist for the Blue Jackets in front of a sellout crowd of 12,882 in his hometown, Jakub Voracek scored Columbus’ first power-play goal of the season and Sean Kuraly also scored for the Blue Jackets, who dropped their fourth straight.
The teams will play again Saturday at Tampere’s Nokia Arena as part of the league’s Global Series. Nashville swept two games from San Jose last month in Prague to kick off the regular season, the first NHL games in Europe since before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Rantanen made it 4-3 with a one-timer from the right circle on the power play at 8:54 of the final period. He completed his hat trick with an empty-netter, his seventh goal of the season, to the delight of the fans chanting his name.
“The crowd chanting that was pretty cool. I had chills on the bench,” he said.
MacKinnon assisted on the empty-netter.
“I knew he was probably gonna pull up and maybe look for me so I was skating up there,” Rantanen said. “It was a good pass from him for an assist, it tells how good of a player he is and a nice guy, I’d say.”
Alex Newhook fed O’Connor to score the opening goal with a snap shot past goaltender Elvis Merzlikins 1:36 into the game. Compher doubled the lead on the power play with by deflecting Devon Toews’ shot from the blue line into the net with 7:36 to go as Avalanche dominated the opening period, outshooting Columbus 16-7.
Rantanen made it 3-0 just 35 seconds into the middle period.
Voracek reduced the Avalanche’s lead to 3-1 a minute after Rantanen’s goal on power play.
Laine got the Blue Jackets within one from the left circle at 7:16 of the period for his second of the season.
It was his fifth NHL goal in Finland after four in two regular-season games for the Winnipeg Jets against the Florida Panthers in their 2018 series in Helsinki, most of all NHL players in games outside North America.
“I think satisfied is the wrong word, but I feel like we had some good looks,” Laine said. “Especially after the stretch we’ve had, we were really happy the way we were moving. We got a lot of chances and could have easily had a couple more, but it wasn’t bouncing our way. We can’t wait and hope for the bounces. We have to create our own luck and work harder and bury next time.”
Kuraly tied it 2:32 into the final period. The Blue Jackets outshot the Avalanche 39-36, but Alexandar Georgiev stopped 36 of those shots.
“It was an exiting game for the fans but the coaches would disagree a little bit, maybe too many penalties and scoring chances against, but Georgiev was really good in the net again and made some key saves at the key times again,” Rantanen said.
This is the ninth season the NHL has played in Europe in hopes of connecting with hockey-mad fans. Colorado played Ottawa in Stockholm in 2017, while the Blue Jackets played overseas for the first time since 2010, when they faced San Jose in Stockholm.
NOTES
It was the 31st regular-season game played in Europe, the eighth in Finland and the first in Tampere, and the 37th NHL game contested outside North America. … Avalanche leading scorer Valeri Nichushkin (lower body) did not play for the third straight game. … Captain Boone Jenner returned from an illness to play his 600th game for Columbus, moving past Nick Foligno for third-most in franchise history.
UP NEXT
The teams complete the series on Saturday night.
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