After suffering a tough loss in Nashville on Saturday night, the Colorado Avalanche bounced back in glorious fashion on Sunday at Detroit in an instant classic, overtime thriller.
The Avs can thank Carl Soderberg and Nathan MacKinnon for that good fortune.
Throughout much of the contest, the Avs were always down but never out–not until the final 45 seconds of regulation, when Soderberg netted a score to tie it up at three goals and force overtime. The Avalanche, meanwhile, risked the open net to get the job done as regulation expired.
Enter overtime.
The high-energy free hockey didn’t last three minutes, as the Avs set the pace. MacKinnon became the hero when he netted the winning goal with just 2:05 left on the clock.
With the win, the Avs advanced to 10-8-1 on the season.
For the Avs, Jonathan Bernier earned 21 saves, but that paled in comparison to Jimmy Howard, who had 33.
Colorado’s started off the game sluggishly as it allowed the Red Wings’ Justin Abdelkader to get on the board first just six minutes into play. But with just 16 seconds left in the first period, the Avs retaliated when Erik Johnson snuck the puck past Howard to tie it up.
In the second period, the two teams staved each other off for 19 solid minutes, until Andreas Athanasiou bested Bernier to regain the advantage, 2-1, just before the second intermission.
Nine minutes into the final period of regulation, the Red Wings increased their lead on a score from Niklas Kronwall, and it looked as though the game was slipping away from the Avs again. But the game was far from over.
Two and a half minutes later, Nail Yakopov eased the deficit to make it 3-2 down the stretch and swung the momentum in the Avalanche’s favor. Upon putting up shot after shot in the final minute of regulation, Soderberg finally managed to connect with the back of the net to make things interesting.
With MacKinnon’s final goal, the Avalanche may have finally broken a rough stretch in which it lost four of its last five games, but only time will tell as the team returns to action on Wednesday, Nov. 22 to take on Dallas at 7 p.m.