Nichushkin Scores Twice, Helps Avalanche Defeat Blue Jackets 4-1

Victory on the Road

Valeri Nichushkin scored twice to help the Avalanche defeat the Columbus Blue Jackets 4-1 at Nationwide Arena on Thursday. Brock Nelson and Cale Makar each scored for Colorado while Scott Wedgewood stopped 22 of the 23 shots he faced.

"It was good to see those guys get on the board," Avalanche Head Coach Jared Bednar said about the Gabriel Landeskog-Nelson-Nichushkin line. "They played hard, did some good things and stuck with it. You knew it was a matter of time before it came and it was a big game from those guys and we needed it."

With the win, the Avalanche improved to 4-0-1.

How It Happened

Ivan Provorov put Columbus on the board first with a left-circle one-timer at 1:36 of the second period.

In his 400th NHL contest, Makar tied the game with his second goal of the season via a wrist shot from the high slot at 10:34 of the middle frame.

"He had a great night," Bednar said about Makar. "He was really good tonight. It started with his breakouts, under pressure, lots of contact from their forecheck and he was able to make his way out of some of that contact and use his legs and skate it up the ice and was part of the rush attack. That goal, we built it over a couple shifts, got some pucks back to our [defensemen], we had some good looks from our [defensemen], [their] goalie made some saves, they had some blocks, we were trying to track down some rebounds, we just kind of stuck with it and we had one play to the net and [Martin Necas] retrieved it and got it up to Cale. And when he gets in that area, you like his chances if he hits the net that it's gonna go in. And it was a big goal. I think you get on the board and you start feeling it a little bit and I think that carried over into the second period for us."

Nelson gave the Avs a 2-1 lead with his first goal of the season when he redirected Brent Burns' shot from the point at 11:46 of the second period.

The Avs doubled their lead when Nichushkin scored his first goal of the year via a net-front deflection on Sam Malinski's wrist shot from the point at 19:56 of the second period.

Nichushkin gave the Avs a 4-1 lead with his second goal of the game via an empty-net tally at 18:07 of the third period.

Next Up

The Avalanche return to Ball Arena to host the Boston Bruins on Saturday at 7 p.m. MT on Altitude, KTVD-20 and Altitude+.