Several bouncing pucks and deflections ended up in the back of the net for both teams in the Avalanche’s 7-4 win over the Florida Panthers.
Jonathan Drouin scored his first two goals of the season. His first was a bounce off his shoulder pad from Cale Makar’s shot into the net, and his second was a backhand from a Makar pass.
Sam Girard and Logan O’Connor scored their second goals of the season, and Oliver Kylington and Valeri Nichushkin each netted their first.
Girard’s goal — the fourth of the game — was a lucky deflection off Dmitry Kulikov’s skate in front of the net. The 27-year-old defenseman also made a perfect pass to Mikko Rantanen in front of the net for the fifth goal. It was Rantanen’s only goal but he had three assists for a four-point game.
“Really good game, three really good games in this road trip. Florida — defending champions, and really good team so when we play like this, results are going to come on their own,” Rantanen said after the win. “And defending was good. Offense, we had a night tonight for sure. We were able to score on some chances that we might have not been able to score in the previous games.”
Kylington lined up a cross-ice pass on O’Connor’s goal for his first assist of the season. His goal was a wrist shot just under the crossbar over Sergei Bobrovsky’s shoulder off a perfectly placed pass from Nichushkin.
The 27-year-old Sweden native played the last three games after being in and out of the lineup since the start of the season.
“I just try to be consistent with my play and give the coaches what I’m good at,” Kylington said.
Good: Full team effort
Seven players earned multiple points in the win: Rantanen (4), Nichushkin (3), Drouin (2), Makar (2). Devon Toews (2), Girard (2) and Kylington (2). Artturi Lehkonen, Nathan MacKinnon, Ivan Ivan and O’Connor all had one point each.
See my breakdown above for more details on the full team effort.
Alexandar Georgiev made 27 saves on 31 shots and played another solid game despite giving up a goal less than a minute into the first period. The netminder got beat on three of the four goals, but Aleksander Barkov’s was a wonky one with a bat of the puck into the net that bounced off Georgiev when he made the initial stop.
Bad: Turnovers, Penalties
The Avs stayed mostly on top of the puck but had another high number of giveaways with 21. The Panthers were unable to convert on many of them due to the Avs’ recovery plays.
“We fixed some things that hurt us in Washington — number one, getting back above pucks early to shut down the rush attack. It’s important against Florida as well, that you get back above them because they can be a really dangerous team …,” head coach Jared Bednar said after the game. “I thought that we did a nice job of that, real good defending commitment tonight, and it led to good offense. It was smart puck play … If we didn’t, we laid it back in behind them and got our forecheck rolling a little bit. So I felt like we were a hard team to handle tonight in a lot of different areas.”
The Avalanche were assessed five penalties while the Panthers only got two.
The Cats were called for delay of game after challenging a goaltender interference call on a goal that was waived off. Miles Wood got into it with Matthew Tkachuk and both were sent to the box.
Florida capitalized on a power play at the end of the second from Joel Kiviranta’s interference minor.
