Barrie has five points, Avalanche top Canucks in OT

VANCOUVER -- Defenseman Tyson Barrie had a goal and four assists, all on the power play, and the Colorado Avalanche rallied for a 5-4 overtime win against the Vancouver Canucks at Rogers Arena on Tuesday.
Barrie tied the game 4-4 with 3:01 left in the third period and set up Nathan MacKinnon's one-timer goal with 1:24 left in overtime to give the Avalanche their first win in three games.

WATCH: [All Avalanche vs. Canucks highlights]
MacKinnon had three assists, Mikko Rantanen had a goal and two assists, and Gabriel Landeskog had a goal and an assist for Colorado, which trailed by three goals in the second period and went 5-for-6 on the power play.
"We got ourselves down 4-1, and that's not good enough, but it showed a lot of character from the guys," said Barrie, whose five points are the most by a defenseman in a regular-season game in Avalanche/Quebec Nordiques franchise history. "There was no quit, we didn't change our game, and our power play came up huge. It's a big two points and it's a big win going forward."

The Avalanche (32-23-4) trail the Los Angeles Kings, Anaheim Ducks and Minnesota Wild by three points in the race for the second wild card into the Stanley Cup Playoffs from the Western Conference; Los Angeles and Anaheim are tied for third in the Pacific Division.
"Hopefully it sparks us and we can carry that confidence," coach Jared Bednar said.
Darren Archibald, Nikolay Goldobin, Brandon Sutter and Bo Horvat scored for the Canucks (23-30-7), who have lost three of their past four games (1-2-1).
"When you give up five penalty kill goals, it's something I've never seen before," Sutter said. "It was frustrating to lose in that fashion. I liked our game otherwise."
Colorado and Vancouver scored seven goals in the second period.
Archibald gave the Canucks a 1-0 lead 34 seconds into the period with his second NHL goal, first this season. Tyson Jost tied it 1-1 at 10:46, but Goldobin scored on the power play at 13:01 to give Vancouver a 2-1 lead.
Sutter (13:52) and Horvat (15:42) scored to make it 4-1 before Rantanen got the Avalanche to within 4-2 at 17:57.

"We just wanted to get one before the end of the second to get some momentum and hopefully come back," MacKinnon said.
Instead, Colorado scored another goal before the period ended when MacKinnon set Landeskog up for his 20th of the season with 37 seconds left to make it 4-3.
The Avalanche power play was 1-for-28 in the previous eight games and entered last in the NHL on the road (11.1 percent), but Barrie scored their fourth of the game on a one-timer from the point through traffic to tie it.
"We just wanted to be more aggressive," said MacKinnon, who was playing his second game after missing eight with an upper-body injury. "I feel like we have been doing a poor job of utilizing [Barrie's] one-timer. He has a great shot, wrist shot and one-timer, so we talked yesterday that we wanted to utilize it a lot more, and it worked."
Barrie drew the defense to him before passing to MacKinnon for the game-winner.
"We wanted to load up, Tyson and myself, the best we could, and we talked about it," MacKinnon said. "When I give it to him, it kind of drags everybody over to that one side and hopefully opens up some room for me on the short side, and it worked out."
Colorado goalie Semyon Varlamov made 24 saves, and Anders Nilsson made 29 for Vancouver.

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Goal of the game

MacKinnon's goal at 3:36 of overtime.

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Save of the game

Varlamov stopping Loui Eriksson alone in tight 49 seconds into overtime.

Highlight of the game

MacKinnon's backdoor pass to set up Landeskog's goal at 19:23 of the second period.

They said it

"We were talking about desperation and playing with urgency and we've lacked that a little bit the last handful of games and we felt other teams were turning it up and the competitiveness and urgency in everyone's game at this point in the year was going up and ours wasn't really." -- Avalanche coach Jared Bednar
"They have been struggling lately, but when they start moving the puck, you could tell after they got the first goal they started seeing things they didn't see before. That's what happens when you get one. You start making plays and all of sudden you are feeling it." -- Canucks center Henrik Sedin on the Avalanche power play

Need to know

The Avalanche played their first game since defensemen Erik Johnson and Anton Lindholm each sustained an upper-body injury in a 4-2 loss against the Edmonton Oilers on Sunday. Johnson and Lindholm are out indefinitely. Barrie replaced Johnson, who leads Colorado in average ice time (25:43), on the top defense pair and played 29:44. … Goalie Richard Bachman, recalled from Utica of the American Hockey League on Tuesday, backed up Nilsson in place of Jacob Markstrom, who has a minor injury but has been skating.

What's next

Avalanche: At the Edmonton Oilers on Thursday (9 p.m. ET; SN1, ALT, NHL.TV)
Canucks: At the Vegas Golden Knights on Friday (10:30 p.m. ET; ATTSN-RM, SNP, NHL.TV)