In the first of three meetings this season, the Stanley Cup Champion Los Angeles Kings beat the Colorado Avalanche 4-1 in Denver in Thursday night.
The Avalanche’s (24-23-11) two-game winning streak came to an end as they wrapped up their season-long, four-game homestand with a 2-2-0 record. The absence of no. 1 defenseman Erik Johnson (knee) continues to hold the club back as they try to push for the playoffs.
The Kings (27-18-12) on the other hand, picked up their sixth straight win while improving to 8-1-0 when Tyler Toffoli records multiple points in a game.
L.A. used a three-goal second period to erase a 1-0 Avalanche lead and take control of the game.
Dwight King extended his career-long point streak to five games with a second period assist.
Jonathan Quick was at the top of his game, turning away 42 shots on the way to his 23rd win of the season.
“How way we played offensively, I thought our guys deserved a lot better,” Avalanche head coach Patrick Roy said. “Their goalie played really well, he made a lot of good saves. That’s part of the game sometimes.”
Gabriel Landeskog opened the scoring just 3:09 into the game with a one-timed blast off a nice set up by Nathan MacKinnon. The Avs’ captain is on a career-long, four-game scoring streak. He has scored Colorado’s first goal in three consecutive contests.
Jeff Carter tipped in a Toffoli point shot and tied the game early in the second period. Carter would chip in an empty-netter late in the game to complete a two-goal night.
Toffoli and Dustin Brown added second period goals to give L.A. a 3-1 lead heading into the final frame.
Trevor Lewis made an unbelievable backhand saucer pass to spring Toffoli on a breakaway for the game-winning goal.
“I can’t complain, I understand it’s frustrating because that was a big game for us,” coach Roy said. “At the same time, I’m very happy with the effort, I’m very happy how we competed, how hard we worked, how hard we backchecked, our forecheck was there, we had a lot of shots, we had a lot of traffic in front of the net. I thought we did a lot of good things, but nothing to shot for it tonight.”
The Avalanche are back in action on Friday when they visit the Chicago Blackhawks in the Windy City.
Nathan is a staff writer for Mile High Sports. He can be reached on Twitter at @TheRealNatron.