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  • Avalanche shake off blown lead, reach Olympic break with 4-2 win against Sharks

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    This Colorado Avalanche team with a multi-goal lead remains the safest bet in sports, but this one didn’t come easy.

    The Avs coughed up a two-goal advantage early in the third period, but still defeated the San Jose Sharks, 4-2, Wednesday night at Ball Arena. Colorado reaches the NHL’s break for the 2026 Winter Olympics atop the league standings with 83 points. The 37-9-9 record includes a 32-0-0 mark when leading a game by two or more goals at any point.

    Josh Manson’s blast from the top of the offensive zone gave the Avs the lead with 7:16 remaining. Valeri Nichushkin set him up with his third assist of the night.

    Nathan MacKinnon collected his second assist, which were career Nos. 700 and 701. MacKinnon wasn’t credited with a third assist, but his battle with Macklin Celebrini in the neutral zone helped create an empty-net goal for Brock Nelson with 1:17 remaining.

    San Jose struck twice in the opening four minutes to erase a two-goal deficit.

    Alexander Wennberg carried the puck into the Colorado zone on the right wing and all the way below the goal line. He turned and set up defenseman Timothy Liljegren trailing the play for a one-timer from the right point. The puck went off Parker Kelly’s stick and deflected past Mackenzie Blackwood just 43 seconds into the third.

    Philipp Kurashev evened the score at 3:34. Samuel Girard turned the puck over at the offensive blue line, which led to an odd-man rush for San Jose. Kurashev kept it himself and fooled Blackwood with his shot.

    Lehkonen opened the scoring 65 seconds into the second period. It was a wild scramble in the Sharks crease, and Lehkonen was credited with the goal. Yaroslav Askarov had lunged forward trying to make a save, and by the time the puck crossed the goal line two San Jose players were laying in the blue paint and all three Colorado top-line forwards were digging for it.

    The Finnish forward made it a 2-0 lead at 15:47 of the second. Nichushkin tried to get the puck to MacKinnon during an odd-man rush. His first attempt didn’t get there, and the second was too late for MacKinnon to shoot. He collected it, curled around to the right of the goalie and found Lehkonen in the right circle for a one-timer.

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    Corey Masisak

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  • Avalanche’s record-selling Pride Night became a ‘Heated Rivalry’ celebration

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    Mary Myers is a huge football fan and loves the Denver Broncos.

    As she put it though, being a women and a fan in male-dominated sports is not always welcoming. Myers and one of her best friends, Andrea Slora, are not big hockey fans. But like many other people, they are very much fans of “Heated Rivalry,” the Canadian television show that streamed on HBOMax in the United States and has become a pop culture phenomenon.

    Myers, who is bisexual, read the “Game Changers” series of books by Canadian author Rachel Reid, on which the show is based, and then was tuned in when the show premiered on Thanksgiving. She recommended it to Slora, who is queer, and both “have been consumed by it.” So much so that Myers was at Ball Arena on Monday night, wearing a sweatshirt featuring the two main characters, Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov, with Slora, sporting a Boston Raiders shirt with No. 81 and Rozanov on the back.

    Show’s popularity drives ticket sales

    They weren’t alone. It was Pride Night for the Colorado Avalanche, and on the concourses, it was also a celebration of the show that has brought hockey to a whole new audience. Just in the span of a five-minute interview, six people came up to Myers and Slora to compliment them on the shirts they were wearing.

    “One of my close coworkers is a huge Avs fan and she’s also queer,” Slora said. “So I was like, ‘OK, I have a spot here.’ Also, just seeing how into it she is, like she will watch the games when we’re at work and get so into it.”

    The Avalanche has had a Pride Night on the promotional schedule for nearly a decade, and the organization was one of the first sports teams to participate in the Denver Pride Parade. The team did not incorporate specific “Heated Rivalry” themes into its plans for Monday evening, but it was easily its most successful Pride Night.

    Sales on the Pride Night ticket packages were up 47% from last year, which was previously the best-selling night. A portion of the proceeds will go to You Can Play, a campaign that promotes inclusion and hopes to eradicate homophobia in sports.

    There were some allusions to the show — the phrase “Heated Rivalry” was on the scoreboard before the game with the Avalanche and Detroit Red Wings logos, and “All The Things She Said,” which has become synonymous with the show, also played in the arena shortly before puck drop.

    There’s also little question that the popularity of the show and the books helped drive the record sales.

    “Heated Rivalry has been a conversation topic in the office,” Avs marketing director Megan Boyle said. “It’s pretty cool to see how many people that have never even watched hockey or cared too much about hockey have started to take interest in hockey and the Avalanche.

    “I think it just shows that community and a sense of belonging is really important. That’s one of the biggest reasons why we continue to do Pride Night is to be part of our community.”

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    Corey Masisak

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  • Avalanche earn depth-charged 4-0 victory against Columbus, led by Trent Miner, Brent Burns

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    It was Next Generation day at Ball Arena, which involves kids taking over key roles during the in-game fan experience.

    It turned into a day where the Colorado Avalanche stars took a back seat to some of the “other guys” as well.

    Brent Burns scored twice, Trent Miner collected his first NHL victory and shutout with 29 saves and the bottom-six forwards were all over the scoresheet in a 4-0 win Saturday afternoon against the Columbus Blue Jackets.

    “We got contributions from a bunch of different guys tonight,” Avs coach Jared Bednar said. “It’s how you win. If you want to win a lot, you’re going to win in different ways and different guys are going to be chipping in. That’s what our team has been doing a lot this year.”

    The Avs have now won the first two contests of this season-long seven-game homestand. Colorado is halfway through its home slate this season, and is 19-0-2 at Ball Arena. The Avs have also won 17 straight here, which is one one shy of the franchise record set during the 2021-22 campaign.

    Burns gave Colorado the lead at 13:58 of the opening period. Gavin Brindley took the puck off the wall after a nice pass from Valeri Nichushkin and to the net on a rush. During the ensuing scramble, the rebound of a sharp-angle Ross Colton shot kicked out to the inside edge of the right circle and Burns snapped one through all the traffic in front for his seventh goal of the season.

    His second goal of the game and eighth of the year came with Colorado’s fourth line on the ice. Brindley and Zakhar Bardakov collected assists as Burns’ perimeter shot went off the goaltender, off a Blue Jackets’ defenseman and trickled across the goal line.

    Burns is one of the great offensive defensemen on the 21st century, but his eight goals this year are already two more than his last season with the Carolina Hurricanes. He’s well-positioned to hit double digits for the 14th time in his career, and 15 for the ninth time isn’t out of the question.

    His two-goal game came two days after his defense partner, Josh Manson, scored twice.

    “I don’t think either shot was going at the net,” Burns said. “I wasn’t thinking about it. (Manson) even talked about it today, about how this game has a funny way of humbling you … we just talked about having a good game. It was lucky bounces, but it’s (also) forwards being in good spots.”

    Colorado’s recently formed third line produced the next two goals after Burns’ opener. Parker Kelly, up from the fourth line because of an injury to captain Gabe Landeskog, won a battle along the boards to the right of Columbus goalie Elvis Merzlikins. He got the puck to Jack Drury, who made a crafty little pass to Victor Olofsson for a backhanded shot and his eight goal of the season at 17:28 of the opening period.

    Olofsson, a shoot-first offensive player in his career, had gone 11 games without a goal, though Avs coach Jared Bednar has repeatedly praised his defense and all-around play in his first season with the club.

    Ilya Solovyov scored his first career NHL goal to give Colorado a 3-0 advantage midway through the second period. Olofsson led the offensive rush out of his own end, before leaving the puck for Kelly. His cross-ice pass found Solovyov, the trailing defenseman, and he buried a wrist shot from the left circle at 10:30 of the middle frame.

    It was the third straight game with a point for Solovyov. He had no goals and four assists in his first 25 career NHL games, but has a goal and two assists in his past three.

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    Corey Masisak

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  • As Jared Bednar tries new line combos, Avalanche keeps winning

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    This edition of the Colorado Avalanche has been so consistently good that Jared Bednar, often a tinkerer when he’s looking for a spark, hasn’t needed to turn the line blender on very often.

    After starting 31 consecutive games with the same top line, the Avs’ top trio had a new look Saturday night in a 4-2 win against the Nashville Predators. Well, new to start a game, anyway.

    Bednar moved rookie Gavin Brindley to the top line in the middle of the previous game, a 6-2 thumping of the Florida Panthers. Brindley started a game there for the first time, bumping Martin Necas down to the third line.

    “Awesome,” Brindley said. “Playing with the best, if not one of the best players in the world. Pretty damn cool. I never thought that would come to fruition. Yeah, really cool.”

    NHL’s rash of overtime games needs a solution: Three-point games

    Bednar’s rationale was pretty simple: He liked how Brindley played with Nathan MacKinnon and Artturi Lehkonen the game before, and wanted to see it again. Part of the reason for the switch Thursday against the Panthers was Necas has been playing through an illness, and didn’t love how he was playing.

    It says something about how this season is going for the Avs that Necas still set up a goal and scored one, albeit one that was taken off the board because of an offsides challenge, against Florida.

    There are still 50 games left in this season, but the Avs have steamrolled their way to the top of the NHL standings. They have 53 points in 32 games, which is tied for the third-most in league history at this point.

    Bednar’s philosophy on building lines has a couple of core ideas. If he finds a line he really likes, he will stick with it for long stretches, and will likely to go back to at some point in the future. But, he also likes to tinker, and often says he wants every player to play with everyone over the course of a regular season.

    “It’s definitely a bonus,” MacKinnon said of the flexibility. “We might need different combos eventually. I think it’s good to switch things up sometimes. I thought all four lines played pretty good (Saturday night).”

    The past couple of Avalanche teams have given him good reason to shake up his lineup, either with slow starts to the season or in-season funks. The closet thing this group has had to an adverse stretch was a four-game losing streak that still involved collecting three points (0-1-3).

    So, after 30 overwhelmingly successful games, Bednar did a little tinkering. Brindley’s return to the lineup against Florida led to a few new looks. Ross Colton moved to the middle for the first time all season, centering the third line. Brindley slotted in next to him, playing with the third line for the first time.

    Jack Drury moved down to the fourth line, with Parker Kelly and Joel Kiviranta. A trio of Drury, Kelly and Logan O’Connor became of Bednar’s favorite lines last season, and they had an excellent playoff series against the Dallas Stars.

    Roster construction and O’Connor’s injuries has kept that line apart this year, but Bednar has said they will play together again at some point. And Kiviranta is a pretty similar player to O’Connor.

    Grading The Week: Avalanche need to avoid first-round dogfight vs. Dallas, Quinn Hughes in Stanley Cup Playoffs

    Drury took the demotion in stride against Florida, and then scored Colorado’s second goal against Nashville.

    “It’s easy. It’s part of being a pro,” Drury said before the Nashville game. “I’ve said this before, but there are so many good players (here), it doesn’t really matter who you are going out with. Any forward you go out with is going to be able to make plays and be smart. It’s easy.”

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    Corey Masisak

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  • Avs betting Gavin Brindley, fresh off two-year extension, isn’t close to reaching his ceiling

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    On Sunday in Vancouver, Avalanche coach Jared Bednar showed his faith in Gavin Brindley.

    On Tuesday in Denver, the Colorado front office followed suit.

    Two days after Bednar moved the fourth-line forward to the first line in the third period and then sent him back onto the ice for overtime, resulting in Brindley’s first career game-winning goal, the Avs announced they signed Brindley to a two-year extension.

    That extension, which carries an average annual value of $875,000 and runs through the 2027-28 season, is evidence that Colorado believes the 21-year-old can emerge as a fixture in the offense over the next three years.

    “I think he can be a (first- or second-line) forward in this league,” Bednar said. “He plays bigger than his size, the motor, the relentlessness, the skill level and the brain to go with it is all there. His (ceiling) is really high. He’s being used in that (fourth-line) role because there’s guys I trust higher in the lineup, and who have played those roles before.

    “… (What he did in Vancouver), that’s repeatable from him. We’ll keep trying to move him up when he’s really going, or when other guys are struggling. If not, he just makes our team deeper and more dangerous offensively when he’s playing in the bottom six (forwards).”

    Considering where Brindley’s stock was just five months ago when the Avs traded for him, Tuesday’s announcement speaks to the strong impression he’s made in his short time in Colorado.

    The Avs sent forwards Charlie Coyle and Miles Wood to the Blue Jackets on June 27 in a cap-clearing move, and got Brindley and two draft picks in return. Taken No. 34 overall by Columbus in 2023, Brindley was coming off a poor debut in his first full professional season for the Cleveland Monsters of the American Hockey League. In 52 games, he tallied 17 points, including only six goals.

    That made him expendable in a trade that Brindley says “definitely put a chip on my shoulder.”

    “Coming off last year, not the best year for myself, I just got back to my game and got back to what I know works,” Brindley said. “I had a lot of different emotions after the trade. There’s positives and negatives to getting traded that young, but (in retrospect), it’s good to go through it early, experience that, experience the downs of last year, learn from it and get better and grow.”

    Brindley said extension talks between his agent and the Avs heated up over the last few weeks and came to a head on Monday. In 14 games entering Tuesday night’s showdown with Anaheim, Brindley had five points (three goals, two assists) while becoming a lineup regular. That’s in stark contrast to the previous two years, when he barely got a cup of coffee with Columbus (one game in 2023-24) in the NHL.

    Parker Kelly, who plays on the fourth line with Brindley, noted that Brindley “has done a great job of coming in and picking up what we’ve built here.”

    “Gavin’s been making plays and obviously we saw him get onto the top line (in Vancouver) and then he buries the game-winner in overtime,” Kelly said. “He was probably our best player throughout the majority of that game.

    “But where I’ve really seen his growth (on the fourth line) is his understanding of the game. … Sometimes he just needs to make the safe play, and he’s been doing a really good job of picking his spots, making plays when he can and being smart with the puck when he doesn’t have plays to make.”

    Brindley has also earned roles on both the penalty kill and the power play — he’s now on the second unit for the latter. That’s another indication of Bednar’s growing trust in the young forward, who would’ve entered restricted free agency this summer without an extension.

    “He’s a well-rounded player who is willing to learn and add to his toolbox to be able to get more minutes,” Bednar said.

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    Kyle Newman

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  • Nathan MacKinnon has 2 goals and 2 assists in the Avalanche’s 9-1 romp over the Oilers

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    EDMONTON, Alberta — Nathan MacKinnon had two goals and two assists, Cale Makar, Parker Kelly and Jack Drury also scored twice and the Western Conference-leading Colorado Avalanche embarrassed the Edmonton Oilers 9-1 on Saturday night.

    Gavin Brindley also scored, Scott Wedgewood made 23 saves and Devon Toews had three assists. The Avalanche have earned at least a point in six straight games to improve to 9-1-5.

    Connor McDavid scored for Edmonton. The Oilers have dropped three straight to fall to 6-6-4.

    Stuart Skinner allowed four goals on 13 shots before being replaced by Calvin Pickard, who made 17 stops.

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    The Associated Press

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  • Avalanche Journal: Five thoughts on Colorado’s fast, drama-free start

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    Jared Bednar, an avid angler, likes to compare his hockey team over a long season to a boat.

    He sees it like this: The team builds its identity and what it wants to be over the first part of the season, and then there are aspects that just break during the grind of 82 games — kind of like a well-used fishing vessel. How quickly the club fixes the issues and regains its optimal performance is a big part of a successful campaign.

    The Colorado Avalanche left the dock with a major leak last season. Fixing the boat on the fly was an all-hands-on-deck situation, from the coaching staff to the front office.

    The start of the 2025-26 season has been a complete 180. The Avs were 4-0-1 heading into a Saturday night contest at Ball Arena with the Boston Bruins, and the one blemish might have been the best overall performance considering the foe.

    Colorado’s NHL team is relatively healthy, stable and off to a strong start. The Avs allowed eight goals in the season opener last year. They’ve allowed eight total in the first five contests.

    “Overall, a pretty good start, being able to win hockey games without really having played our best as a team,” Avs captain Gabe Landeskog said. “If you can figure out your game as a team while winning, and kind of go through some of those growing pains at the start of the season while racking up some points, I think that’s a positive thing.

    “And I think we are only scratching the surface.”

    Here are some observations from the first five-game segment of this Stanley Cup-or-bust season in Denver.

    1. Nathan MacKinnon is already in Hart Trophy finalist form

    Natural Stat Trick had MacKinnon on the ice for 17 scoring chances in Buffalo. He took 17 shifts in the game. The 2024 league MVP has been on the ice for 49 scoring chances at 5-on-5, which is tied for third among forwards. The two players ahead of him and the one who is even are all on the two-time defending champs, the Florida Panthers, who have also played an extra game.

    The Avs have outscored the opposition 7-0 at even strength with MacKinnon on the ice, 10-0 overall. Those are just some numbers in a small sample size.

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    Corey Masisak

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  • Avalanche “dodged a bullet” when Brock Nelson’s wrist was cut by Bo Byram’s skate

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    BUFFALO — Brock Nelson will celebrate his 34th birthday on Wednesday, which means he’s experienced a lot in his life as a hockey player.

    Nelson encountered a first Monday afternoon at KeyBank Center when he was cut on the left wrist by a wayward skate. It’s one of the scariest things that can happen in the sport. Luckily for Nelson, it went about as well as one of those situations can.

    “When I felt it, it kind of felt like a stinger-type feeling in my hand. I knew I got hit by something, then I looked and I saw it was cut,” Nelson said after the Avalanche defeated the Buffalo Sabres, 3-1. “I knew I was cut, so I just went off (the ice). I’ve never really had a cut like that before. When I saw the cut, I was almost waiting for more blood to come out. I think it was just clean and more superficial. Just a couple zips.”

    Nelson went to defend ex-Avs defenseman Bo Byram along the boards near the Colorado bench early in the third period. Byram got the puck past him, but also fell awkwardly to the ice. His right leg elevated as the rest of his body tumbled, and caught Nelson just under his glove.

    For all of the protection hockey players wear, there are a few places on the body that can get exposed in those types of situations. Nelson flung off his glove, looked at his hand/wrist, and immediately went to the Avs bench, down the tunnel and in search of a doctor.

    “We dodged a bullet there,” Avs coach Jared Bednar said. “He got a laceration on his wrist, got some stitches, but as of now, everything looks intact. It was just the flesh, which is super lucky.”

    Nelson said they tested his fingers, and everything checked out. He ended up missing less than eight minutes of game action, and returned to play three shifts in the second half of the third period.

    Both Nelson and Bednar said they think he’s fine moving forward. The Avs have been relatively healthy to start this season, but losing Nelson for any amount of time would be a significant blow.

    This is his first full season with the club, and Bednar clearly enjoys having him available to center the second line. Nelson, even with missing a few shifts against the Sabres, has played 82:30 in the first four games.

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    Corey Masisak

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