Recap: Ducks Fall 5-1 to Avalanche in Homestand Finale

The Ducks could not slow down the defending Stanley Cup champs tonight at Honda Center, falling 5-1 to the Colorado Avalanche in the finale of an eight-game homestand.
DUCKS STREAM | NHL GAMECENTER

The loss, Anaheim's fifth in a row, dropped the club to 23-41-10 and capped the homestand at 1-6-1. The Ducks have eight games remaining on the regular-season schedule, with four of those games slated for Honda Center.
Derek Grant scored the lone goal for Anaheim, giving the Ducks an early lead with his fifth goal of the season. Jakob Silfverberg tallied an assist. John Gibson made 39 saves.
Bowen Byram, Nathan MacKinnon, Jack Johnson, Valeri Nichushkin and Samuel Girard scored for the Avalanche, who won their third straight game and kept pace with the Minnesota Wild (who defeated Seattle 5-1 tonight) for the top spot in the Central Division. Goaltender Jonas Johansson earned the win in net, stopping 29-of-30 Anaheim shots.
Anaheim's fourth line found the game's first goal midway through the opening period, taking advantage of a Colorado turnover right in front of its own net. As reigning Norris Trophy-winner Cale Makar tried to break the puck out of the zone, his pass missed MacKinnon in the center of the ice, allowing Silfverberg to setup Grant for a redirect on the doorstep, which snuck through Johansson for an early Ducks lead.

Grant has points in two of his last three games (1-1=2) and 14 points in 38 appearances this season (5-9=14). The goal was the 54th of his Ducks career, tying Mike Leclerc for 27th place in club history.
Silfverberg has assists in three of his last four games and now owns 192 for his NHL career. He's also now just five points away from tying his former teammate Rickard Rakell for seventh-most in Ducks history.
Unfortunately for the Ducks, the early deficit did little to phase the defending champs as the Avs scored four unanswered goals in a span of 8:03 bookending the first intermission.
Byram tied the game on a tough bounce for the Ducks, as the defenseman's point shot that appeared to be headed wide of the net deflected off the shin of defenseman Simon Benoit and past Gibson.
The 21-year-old Byram, taken fourth overall in the 2019 draft, has scored in back-to-back games.
It appeared that 1-1 score would last into that first intermission, but the tie would not survive the final 10 seconds of the frame. As the puck came to MacKinnon in the corner, the former first overall selection showed off his skating skills, shaking the check of defenseman Scott Harrington before cutting to the middle and lifting a wrister over Gibson's blocker through traffic.
Despite playing in only 61 of Colorado's 73 games so far this season, MacKinnon is sixth among all NHL skaters in scoring this season and seventh in assists.
With the primary assist, winger Mikko Rantanen clinched his fourth 40-assist season in the NHL and moved within four points of 400 for his career.
Makar tallied two assists on the night for his fourth multi-point performance in his last five games. The UMass product has 4-17=21 points in his last 11 games, third-most in the NHL during that span and tops among defensemen.
The Avs kept the offensive pressure up in the early minutes of the second too, doubling the advantage from the most unlikely of sources. The left-handed version of Colorado's Johnson and Johnson third pair, Jack took the puck off the left wing wall and drifted along the blue line, eventually electing to fire his shot into a sea of bodies blocking out Gibson's vision. The wrister somehow made its wave through the five players between Gibson and Johnson, sailing by the sliding goaltender to the glove side and putting Colorado ahead 3-1.
The goal was Johnson's first since Opening Night of the 2021-22 season, 146 games ago for the reacquired Avs blueliner. A member of Colorado's Stanley Cup championship team last year, Johnson signed a free-agent contract with Chicago before this season but was dealt back to Colorado at the NHL Trade Deadline.
Long Beach native Matt Nieto collected an assist on the goal, his 10th career point in 35 games against Anaheim. Nieto ranks fifth in NHL history in scoring by a California-born player (197 career points), trailing Lee Norwood (211), Jason Robertson (216), Jason Zucker (334) and Auston Matthews (534).
Nichushkin capped the four-goal outburst as the beneficiary of a Ducks defensive zone breakdown and a brilliant pass by MacKinnon. As Colorado's leading scorer circled towards the slot, three Ducks defenders stepped up to defend, leaving way too much open space for Nichuskin to fire a one-timer from MacKinnon past the sprawled-out Gibson.
Nichushkin's goal extended his point streak to seven games (3-5=8). The 28-year-old winger has 16 goals and 43 points this season, each the second-best total of his eight-year NHL career.
MacKinnon and Makar both secured multi-point nights with helpers on the fourth Colorado goal, their 32nd and 18th of the season, respectively.
The Avs lead hit four early in the third period with a power-play goal when a rebound bounced out of Gibson's glove and right to Girard on the backdoor for what looked like an empty-net goal.
That would be more than enough support for Johansson and the Avs defense, which shut the door throughout the third period to earn a 5-1 victory.
The Ducks begin a three-game road trip Thursday in Seattle.