Avalanche score eight, shut out Blues

DENVER --The Colorado Avalanche scored five goals on the power play in an 8-0 win against the St. Louis Blues at Ball Arena on Friday.

Nathan MacKinnon had a goal and two assists, Gabriel Landeskog scored twice, Mikko Rantanen, Nazem Kadri, Andre Burakovsky and Devon Toews each had a goal and an assist, and Cale Makar had three assists for Colorado (1-1-0), which lost to St. Louis 4-1 on Wednesday. Philipp Grubauer made 21 saves for his 12th NHL shutout.
"What I liked was our response start to finish," Avalanche coach Jared Bednar said. "We got outworked, we got embarrassed in the opening game, and we lost and it wasn't the way we wanted to lose. I think the guys took it to heart and came out with a real strong work ethic, a real strong competitiveness and a real good commitment to defend. When we defend like that, we come up with the puck a lot more and then we're able to go on the attack."

Bednar reinserted Landeskog on the top line with MacKinnon and Rantanen after Burakovsky played in that spot Wednesday.
"When you have the kind of game we had (Wednesday) and you need to dig out of a rut, those three guys are the leaders of our hockey club," Bednar said. "If we're going to challenge guys on our team, it's going to be those guys because of their status on our team. So we put them together to give them the best opportunity on our team to succeed and lead our hockey club, and that's exactly what they did."
Jordan Binnington made 20 saves for St. Louis (1-1-0) before being replaced at the start of the third period by Ville Husso, who allowed four goals on 14 shots in his NHL debut.
"We embarrassed ourselves tonight," Blues captain Ryan O'Reilly said. "That was very disappointing. We came into the game and you could tell we didn't have the detail in it. The little things steamrolled into big things. It was everyone. [Binnington] played outstanding. The time he was in the net he made some huge saves, but once they got the first one, we tightened right up. Everyone right now, we're embarrassed. That was not what we do."
Landeskog gave the Avalanche a 1-0 lead at 4:03 of the second period, scoring glove side from the slot off a pass from MacKinnon.

Burakovsky made it 2-0 at 12:24 on the power play, and Landeskog scored his 200th NHL goal to increase the lead to 3-0 at 14:34 with a shot along the goal line after receiving a pass from Rantanen from behind the net.
Rantanen made it 4-0 at 17:05 on the power play with a one-timer from the right face-off dot following a pass from Makar. The goal was his 100th in the NHL.
"It was great, the power play got clicking," MacKinnon said. "It was great to see a lot of different guys start feeling it and chip in. We're just trying to establish ourselves. It was weird, definitely a different atmosphere playing in your home rink with no fans. We were a little flat in the first period on Wednesday. Being our home opener, it was pretty dead. Tonight, we're used to it now, had a great start. We know that wasn't St. Louis' best. We got some good bounces. If we play the exact same way again, I don't think we're going to score eight."

Kadri pushed the lead to 5-0 at 1:13 of the third period when he slapped in the rebound of MacKinnon's initial shot on the power play.
MacKinnon then scored on a breakaway during a power play to make it 6-0 at 11:29, Joonas Donskoi redirected Toews' shot to make it 7-0 at 12:02, and Toews scored the fifth power-play goal at 14:56 for the 8-0 final.
"It should be a wakeup call," Blues coach Craig Berube said. "It's a tough league and you have to show up every night, you've got to compete every night and you have to play the right way. We're a structured hockey team, we play good defense, and we didn't do any of that tonight."
NOTES:Blues defenseman Robert Bortuzzo left the game with an upper-body injury after taking three shifts in the first period. … Forward Mike Hoffman had two shots and was minus-1 in 15:05 of ice time in his debut with St. Louis. … Colorado's five power-play goals tied its high since moving from Quebec in 1995 (also Feb. 20, 2018, at Vancouver Canucks).