Lehkonen has goal, assist, Avalanche end Canadiens' 12-game point streak

MONTREAL -- The Colorado Avalanche handed the Montreal Canadiens their first loss in regulation in a month, snapping their 12-game point streak with a 4-1 win at Bell Centre on Saturday.

Artturi Lehkonen scored for a third straight game and had an assist, and Mackenzie Blackwood made 25 saves for Colorado (12-6-3), which extended its point streak to five games (3-0-2).

“‘Blackie’ made a lot of key saves for sure,” Lehkonen said. “There were a lot of tough situations around the net, and he basically made some big saves.”

Colorado was playing its first game without forward Nathan MacKinnon and defenseman Cale Makar, who each sustained a lower-body injury in the second period of a 4-3 overtime loss to the Ottawa Senators on Thursday. MacKinnon will be out at least a month; Makar will miss approximately two weeks.

“You’ve got to adjust a little bit,” Avalanche coach Jared Bednar said. “It’s not a different game plan than what we’ve had for the bulk of the season, it’s just we have an understanding now that we’ve got to be better in some areas because we’re going to be lacking in some other areas. So that takes the buy-in that I’m talking about, the commitment that I’m talking about, the discipline that we’ve been talking about. 

“And that it’s really nice that when you do it that you get rewarded, and that it was hard-fought. You know it’s not always going to be easy. It’s a really good team over there and you’ve got to work your way through their checking game, and you’ve got to be able to defend them because that’s a dangerous, dangerous offensive team. And I thought we did that tonight as best we could.”

Nick Suzuki scored for Montreal (12-4-4), which was 9-0-3 since a 5-4 loss at the Washington Capitals on Oct. 14. Jakub Dobes made 23 saves.

“I didn’t hate our game,” Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis said. “I’ll have to watch it but in general I thought we had the right intentions. Our offensive execution was missing a little something. I think it was hard to score goals because of that a bit. Listen, we were on a long run and sometimes those come to an end. We’ll start another one.”

Fedor Svechkov put the Avalanche up 1-0 at 3:57 of the first period. He drove the net from the left and got a shot past Dobes glove side from in tight after Canadiens defenseman Adam Engstrom backed off to cover Parker Kelly driving in from the right.

“It got deflected, I don’t know what else I can do,” Dobes said. “I feel like the shooter had nothing to shoot at, but it was just unfortunate. But we’ll talk about it and we’ll have a better start next game.”

Brock Nelson made it 2-0 at 15:55 when he drove a one-timer over Dobes’ left shoulder from low in the right face-off circle with a delayed penalty signaled against Montreal.

Suzuki cut it to 2-1 at 10:25 of the second period with a highlight-reel goal. The Canadiens captain spun to his right to get free of Devon Toews and put a backhand over Blackwood’s glove from between the hashmarks after Juraj Slafkovsky held up driving in from the right to set him up at the top of the slot.

“It was kind of the only play that I felt I had to kind of spin with it and throw it on net,” Suzuki said. “I got lucky, kind of.”

Lehkonen gave Colorado a 3-1 lead with a power-play goal at 4:14 of the third period when he fired in his own rebound from the slot.

Alex Newhook appeared to draw the Canadiens within one at 10:55 but a video review determined his stick made contact with the puck above the level of the crossbar when he deflected Kirby Dach’s wrist shot from the left point.

“You never know, right?” Blackwood said about waiting out the review. “You never know what they see, what the cameras see. I know what I see, and I’m reaching to go deflect it over the net. So I thought it was a good call, high stick, but we’ve been on the wrong end of a few of those so it’s nice to get one go our way.”

Nicolas Roy shot into an empty net with 13 seconds remaining for the 4-1 final.

“I thought the guys played a (heck) of a game tonight, limiting their dangerous rush and really playing solid defense, taking care of second chances and making my job a little bit easier,” Blackwood said.

Colorado defenseman Brent Burns became the 14th NHL player to reach 1,600 games played paired with Alex Gagne, who made his NHL debut.

“I think it’s cool, that’s why I started them,” Bednar said. “It’s like two opposite ends of the spectrum, right? First game, 1,600th game, both guys playing the game with a ton of enthusiasm and excitement still. That’s what’s so special about ‘Burnsie.’ He comes to the rink every day, loves being around the guys, loves going on the ice, loves playing. 

“He’s going to give it his all and it’s a perfect guy for a guy like ‘Gags’ because not too many guys get that amount of games. And then when you do, to still be playing with that sort of excitement on a nightly basis is pretty special.”

NOTES: Burns played his 1,028th consecutive game, second only to Phil Kessel’s NHL record of 1,064. … The Avalanche have won 53 straight games when holding a lead after the first two periods dating to April 3 last season. The only longer such streak in NHL history was a 66-game streak by the Pittsburgh Penguins from April 11, 2015, to Feb. 25, 2017. … It was the first time the Canadiens trailed at the end of the first period in 20 games this season. … Montreal was without Chris Kreider. The 35-year-old forward will miss 6-8 weeks with a lower-body injury he sustained in a 5-2 win at the Boston Bruins on Thursday.