Necas Scores Twice as Avalanche Defeat Kings 4-1 in Season Opener

Conquered the Kings

Martin Necas scored twice and Scott Wedgewood stopped 24 of the 25 shots he faced to help the Avalanche defeat the Los Angeles Kings 4-1 in their season opener at Crypto.com Arena on Tuesday.

Sam Malinski and Artturi Lehkonen each added a tally for Colorado, while Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar both posted a pair of assists.

"I thought by the time [the] last seven or eight minutes of the first period, by the time we got there we started to play a little bit more assertive" Avalanche Head Coach Jared Bednar said. "[We] continued that in the second period and got better."

How It Happened

Necas opened the scoring at 48 seconds of the second period with a right-circle wrist shot set up by MacKinnon's feed. With the assist, MacKinnon recorded his 1,016th point and passed Joe Sakic for the most points in franchise history since the team relocated to Colorado.

"[They got off to] a little bit of a slow start," Bednar said about the Lehkonen-MacKinnon-Necas line. "But they got more involved and made some nice plays and capitalized on them, too. Both [on the] power play and [at] five-on-five. I thought they did a nice job setting the tone for us offensively."

In his 100th NHL game, Malinski doubled Colorado's lead at seven minutes of the middle frame with a left-point wrist shot through traffic.

Lehkonen gave the Avs a 3-0 lead at 14:42 of the middle frame when he cleaned up a net-front rebound created by Makar, who deceived a defender with a shot fake before skating to the bottom of the right circle and manufacturing a chance.

Necas scored his second tally of the night with a power-play goal via a right-circle wrist shot at 10:43 of the third period.

Kevin Fiala put the Kings on the board with a five-one-three power-play goal at 15:07 of the third period via a right-circle one-timer.

Next Up

The Avalanche host the Utah Mammoth for their home opener on Thursday at 7 p.m. MT on Altitude and Altitude+.