MacKinnon, Avalanche hold off Mammoth

DENVER -- Nathan MacKinnon broke a tie early in the third period for the Colorado Avalanche, who held on for a 2-1 win against the Utah Mammoth at Ball Arena on Thursday.

MacKinnon scored a power-play goal at 2:52 of the third period with a wrist shot from the left circle that went in off the far post.

“Obviously, that power-play goal is big,” Colorado forward Jack Drury said. “Kind of changed the momentum. So that was big.”

Ross Colton scored, and Scott Wedgewood made 32 saves for the Avalanche (2-0-0).

“We don't win without [Wedgewood] tonight, for sure,” Colorado coach Jared Bednar said. “I don't like leaning on our goalie like that, but it didn't look like we had a lot of jump tonight. I thought they had much more jump than we did, for whatever reason, and some nights you have it, and some nights you don't. You got to find a way to grind through it, and on those nights you need your goalie big time, and we got him tonight.”

Dylan Guenther scored, and Karel Vejmelka made 25 saves for the Mammoth in their season opener.

“We played a good game. We didn't like our first period very much, but I think we got our legs under ourselves and played really good in the second and the third,” Utah coach Andre Tourigny said. “Their goalie came up big. We had good chances, but ‘Wedgie’, the other side did a good job.”

Colton gave the Avalanche a 1-0 lead when he finished a chip pass from Drury into the top right corner past the blocker of a sprawling Vejmelka at 10:57 of the first period. Drury caught a saucer pass from Victor Olofsson at the left dot who then one-touched it over to Colton for the slap shot.

“It was a really, really nice play,” Colton said. “Great pass by 'Olly' over to Jack, and then, thankfully, he heard me. I was screaming for it pretty loud, and he's got eyes in the back of his head there, I guess. Unbelievable pass by him.”

Said Drury: “I saw Ross before I got it. Great pass by 'Olly' getting sauce on it to get over the D's stick, and Ross was ready to shoot. So I made my decision pretty easy.”

Guenther tied it 1-1 with a one-timer from just inside the blue line that beat the blocker of Wedgewood at 17:48 of the second period while on the power play. Clayton Keller fed Guenther after Nick Schmaltz won the face-off in the right circle.

“I would like to tell you it's practice, but it's God-gifted. That's what it is,” said Tourigny.

Said Utah forward Lawson Crouse: “I thought in the second, we did a good job answering. Little bit more chances. I thought we played more of our style hockey, and then obviously in the third, I thought we were right there. It was a battle right to the end.”

The goal came 1:13 after Wedgewood stopped Guenther on a breakaway chance.

NOTES: MacKinnon scored his 70th career game-winning goal and became the second player in Avalanche/Nordiques franchise history to reach the mark (Joe Sakic (86)). … He’s the only player in NHL history with a game-winning goal against 32 different franchises. … Joel Kiviranta played in his 300th career NHL game. … Mammoth defenseman Dmitri Simashev made his NHL debut. He finished with two shots on goal in 14:25 of ice time. “I'll remember this all my life. This was my first game in the NHL. It's unbelievable,” he said. … The Mammoth had five players make their team debut (Andrew Agozzino, JJ Peterka, Nate Schmidt, Simashev, and Brandon Tanev).