Avalanche stars power stunning surge, comeback victory against Hurricanes

The Carolina Hurricanes had a weird travel schedule because of the weather and played their third-string goalie.

That doesn’t make what the Colorado Avalanche did to one of the best teams in the NHL this season during a 10-minute stretch in a 6-4 win Saturday night at Ball Arena any less impressive. The Avs, still missing five key forwards, looked far off the pace against the red-hot Hurricanes for the first 25 minutes of this game.

Then Colorado’s star power took over, producing one of the most impressive avalanches of offense anyone is going to create against Carolina this season. The totality of the scoring spree was five goals in nine minutes and 36 seconds.

“It’s a lot of fun watching those guys work,” Avalanche goalie Alexandar Georgiev said. “When we’re buzzing, it’s a good feeling.”

Down 2-0 and being outshot 17-8, the Avs were on the penalty kill and in danger and being run out of their own rink.

Then Cale Makar intercepted a pass near the right faceoff circle in his own end, skated to the other end of the ice and blasted a slap shot past Carolina goaltender Spencer Martin at 9:13 of the second. The typically mild-mannered Makar uncorked an emphatic celebration that ended with him yelling, “Come on!”

His teammates listened.

Sam Malinski scooped up the rebound of a Nathan MacKinnon rush shot and flipped a backhanded shot past Martin at 10:57 of the period to tie the game. Malinski took a penalty and Martin Necas nudged Carolina back in front with a power-play goal, but the Avalanche stars continued to dominate.

MacKinnon scored his prettiest goal of the season at 15:49 to even it at 3-3. The reigning MVP collected the puck in the neutral zone with some incredible body control, then shook Shayne Gostisbehere with a juke move on a 2-on-1 that became a 1-on-0 for his seventh goal of the season.

“To not lose too much momentum and explode out of that one-on-one, then to look the ‘D’ off a bit, it was a great shot obviously, but that was an impressive goal,” Avs coach Jared Bednar said. “You could just see that those top guys were feeling it.

“As a coach, without killing those guys, you have to be able to recognize when you catch a little momentum and you can keep putting them out there.”

Artturi Lehkonen should have scored on a great setup from MacKinnon to give Colorado the lead. He pulled his shot wide of a wide-open net. Lehkonen made up for it seconds later by tipping a Mikko Rantanen shot past Martin at 16:42.

Carolina challenged for goalie interference, which was incorrect and became a Hurricanes penalty. Then after another penalty, the Avs eventually added a fifth goal of the period on a shot from Rantanen at 18:49. It was a bit of a scramble, but Rantanen eventually collected the puck and just ripped one by Martin.

“We talked in the first intermission that we’ve got to play together a little bit more,” Rantanen said. “I felt like we were a little spread out in the first and they were coming up with a lot of pucks. Last 40 minutes, we were five guys playing together more and playing more connected, which led to playing more with the puck and more O-zone time.”