What began as promise for the Winnipeg Jets quickly unraveled Thursday night in Denver as the Colorado Avalanche rallied from an early deficit to crush the Jets 7-1.
The deck seemed stacked from the get-go for Winnipeg with Dylan DeMelo and Jansen Harkins going into COVID-19 protocol and Paul Stastny out with an undisclosed ailment.
But less than three minutes after the game, Mark Scheifele buried a juicy rebound in the power play to give Winnipeg the early lead. It was the fifth consecutive game in which the team scored a goal with the man ahead.
The Jets continued to defend themselves for much of the first, at one point beating the home team 10-5, but it’s a tough task to keep Avalanche quiet for long.
Nazem Kadri continued his career season by deflecting a point shot from Erik Johnson that passed Connor Hellebuyck to tie the game with 3:40 remaining in the first.
After those promising first 20 minutes, things quickly turned ugly for the Jets in the second period when the Avs bigwigs took control of the game.
The problems began when Pierre-Luc Dubois took a penalty for interference just under five minutes into the frame. Colorado made the Jets pay when Hellebuyck took a hit from Mikko Rantanen, but the rebound flew through the air, landing behind the Winnipeg goalkeeper and Gabriel Landeskog hit him to give Colorado the lead.
The top line continued to rage at the Winnipeg end just over five minutes later. After a win at faceoff, Nathan MacKinnon escaped from the Jets’ defense and threw a powerful shot on target that led to a rebound. Nate Schmidt couldn’t control Rantanen’s stick in front of the net as the Finn scored his team-leading 16th goal.
But wait, there’s more!
Landeskog scored his second of the game and on the 12th of the season at 3:21 p.m., another goal on a rebound. MacKinnon posted his third assist of the night on the account that gave the locals a 4-1 lead.
18-7 was the shooting margin in the period for Colorado.
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Winnipeg had a couple of power play opportunities early in the third period to try to cut Avalanche’s lead, but couldn’t beat Darcy Kuemper.
Tired of helping his teammates, MacKinnon finally landed his own goal just over 12 minutes after the third when he beat Hellebuyck with a short-sided wrist shot.
The top line continued to rain with just under three minutes left in the power play as Landeskog buried a big rebound for his fourth career hat-trick. Naturally, MacKinnon and Rantanen collected assistants.
As if that wasn’t enough, Bowen Byram added a power play count with just seconds left as Colorado finished the night 3 of 4 with the man advantage. Winnipeg went 1 out of 5.
The Avalanche top line was simply too unwieldy for Winnipeg as the trio of Rantanen, Landeskog and MacKinnon combined for five goals and seven assists on the night.
It was also the 21st time in 30 games that Colorado scored at least four goals and the seventh time this season that the Avs scored seven goals.
Hellebuyck made 35 saves in the loss, while Kuemper was rock solid for Colorado making 34 saves.
The Jets are now off for a week as they don’t have another game scheduled until Jan. 13 in Detroit.
Reference-globalnews.ca