DENVER — Nathan MacKinnon bounced back from a rare scoreless night with a goal and an assist to lead the Colorado Avalanche to a 4-3 win over the San Jose Sharks on Saturday night.
MacKinnon had his 15-game points streak ended Friday night and failed to get a shot on goal for the first time in 264 games. He made up for that with his 20th goal on one of nine shots for him.
Mikko Rantanen scored his 28th of the season and added an assist for Colorado and Devan Dubnyk stopped 22 shots against his former team.
Alexander Barbanov and Tomas Hertl had a goal and an assist each, Logan Couture also scored and rookie goaltender Josef Korenar had 39 saves for the Sharks. San Jose fell further behind in the chase for the last playoff spot in the West Division.
The Sharks went more than seven periods and 145 minutes, 32 seconds, without a goal against Colorado but that ended when Barabanov beat Dubnyk with a power-play at 4:25 of the second period to give San Jose a 1-0 lead.
MacKinnon’s tip at 13:08 tied it at 1-1 and Burakovsky gave the Avalanche the lead 2:58 later when he scored off of a faceoff, his 15th of the season.
Patrik Nemeth gave Colorado a two-goal cushion with his third of the season and first since coming over in a trade with Detroit at 9:05 of the third.
Couture’s 17th of the season, a short-handed goal 50 seconds later, made it a one-goal game again. Rantanen made it 4-2 at 15:34 and with Korenar off for an extra skater Hertl scored at 17:47. It was his 16th.
DOWN TWO
Colorado played without two of its top six defensemen on Saturday night. In the first period Ryan Graves took an inadvertent elbow to the head from Evander Kane on Friday night and Samuel Girard went skates first into the boards in the third period.
The Avalanche recalled Dan Renouf and Kyle Burroughs from the Colorado Eagles of the AHL, and they skated as the third defensive pairing.
SAME GAME, DIFFERENT ARENA
The home-and-home, four-game series between these two teams continues with two more in San Jose, Monday and Wednesday night.
