Colorado
Avs’ home heater continues as Colorado beats Winnipeg 3-2 in chippy win
The Avs on home ice remain as close to invincible as a sports team can get.
Colorado beat Winnipeg 3-2 on Friday at Ball Arena, improving to 14-0-2 in Denver. The win extended the longest home point streak to start a season in franchise history, and the Avs’ 12th straight victory at home is the longest in the NHL this season and second-longest streak in franchise history.
“When other teams play here, it’s tough to come into this building,” defenseman Josh Manson said. “When the fans get behind us, momentum shifts. We score a goal, they get loud, the building gets rocking and the momentum starts to carry and we can feel it. And from there, we can start pouring it on.”
The Avs didn’t play perfect on Friday, giving up a shorthanded goal and battling through several Winnipeg surges after reigning Hart Trophy and Vezina Trophy winner Connor Hellebuyck settled into the game.
But as they have all season, Colorado found a way to win in front of the Avs faithful in a game featuring four scuffles, highlighted by a fist fight between Manson and the Jets’ Tanner Pearson. The Avs’ only home losses this year came in a pair of 5-4 shootout setbacks, to Dallas on Oct. 11 and Carolina on Oct. 23.
Since then, Colorado’s been a sure bet to prevail at “The Can.”
“This was one of our better defensive efforts of the year — physical, and we spent some time in the D-zone in the second period and didn’t give up any dangerous chances five-on-five really,” Avs head coach Jared Bednar said. “Made a mistake on the power play, made a mistake on the penalty kill, but besides that I liked our game tonight.”
The Avs started fast against struggling Winnipeg, which has battled injuries and inconsistencies while looking like a shadow of the team that won last season’s Presidents’ Trophy. Colorado blitzed Hellebuyck with a number of quality shots in the first 10 minutes, then finally broke through with Brent Burns’ goal.
“Right from the drop of the puck, we were taking it to them,” Manson said. “… (During this stretch of home dominance) we’ve set the pace on teams.”
Burns, the oldest active NHL player, wristed one home from behind the right playoff circle as his shot deflected off the skate of a Winnipeg defender to make it 1-0.
Five minutes later, Colorado made it 2-0 thanks to a highlight-reel combination between Nathan MacKinnon and Martin Necas. MacKinnon, tied with Edmonton’s Connor McDavid for the NHL points lead entering the night with 58, made a precise pass that split two defenders and found Necas streaking down the center of the ice. Necas beat Hellebuyck on the bottom right shelf.
“When we beat them up ice, we’re capable (of finishes like that),” Necas said.
But in the second period, Hellebuyck tightened up, turning away several scoring chances as the Jets killed three Avs power plays and the crowd buzzed off of Manson’s fight with Pearson.
After both players went to the penalty box just under three minutes into the period, the jumbotron cam jumped from Manson to Pearson, with the former getting met with deafening cheers and the latter with a chorus of boos.
“(That) gets you fired up a little bit,” Parker Kelly said.
But on Colorado’s third man-advantage of the period, the Jets stole the momentum back with a short-handed goal.
Off a Hellebuyck save, Alex Iafallo possessed the puck and cleared up ice high off the glass. Morgan Barron outskated Cale Makar down the ice to retrieve the bouncer, then beat Scott Wedgewood one-on-one with a backhanded shot to quiet the crowd and make it 2-1 with 37 seconds left in the frame.
“We weren’t worried after that,” Manson said. “If anything, I was thinking in my mind, ‘We’re going to go get one here at the start of the third period.’”
The Avs did just that.
Less than two minutes into the third, Colorado grabbed the mojo right back. Manson blasted a shot from up near the blue line, which deflected off a screening Kelly and past Hellebuyck for a 3-1 lead.
“I saw it go to low to high and I just tried to beat my guy to the net,” Kelly said. “(Manson) was walking down mainstream. Honestly, I was just there to try and provide a screen. I thought (Manson) was going to rip it. I don’t know if it got tipped, but the shot was along the ice and my stick was on the ice. Just tried to get a little touch on it.”
But the Jets quickly answered about 90 seconds later, capitalizing on a hooking penalty on Devon Toews as Mark Scheifele scored just seven seconds into Winnipeg’s power play to again make it a one-goal game.
Midway through the period, the Avs had a goal wiped off the board. Kelly deflected the puck into the net off a shot by Samuel Girard, but Kelly used high-sticking to do it, negating the score.
From there, Wedgewood and the Colorado defense held on as the Avs notched their 56th and 57th points of the season. Wedgewood made 20 total saves, including two saves in the final minute to seal the win for Colorado (25-2-7).
“We got heavy around the net, and Wedgie played great between the pipes,” Manson said. “We were making good decisions with the puck at the end of the game… We made smart plays and didn’t force anything in the last eight, 10 minutes of that game.”
The longest home win streak in Avs history came during their championship season in 2021-22, when Colorado won 18 straight in Denver from Nov. 11 to Jan. 30.
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Colorado
Warm storm delivers modest totals to Colorado’s northern mountains
Lucas Herbert/Arapahoe Basin Ski Area
Friday morning wrapped up a warm storm across Colorado’s northern and central mountains, bringing totals of up to 10 inches of snowfall for several resorts.
Higher elevation areas of the northern mountains — particularly those in and near Summit County and closer to the Continental Divide — received the most amount of snow, with Copper, Winter Park and Breckenridge mountains seeing among the highest totals.
Meanwhile, lower base areas and valleys received rain and cloudy skies, thanks to a warmer storm with a snow line of roughly 9,000 feet.
Earlier this week, OpenSnow meteorologists predicted the storm’s snow totals would be around 5-10 inches, closely matching actual totals for the northern mountains. The central mountains all saw less than 5 inches of snow.
Here’s how much snow fell between Wednesday through Friday morning for some Western Slope mountains, according to a Friday report from OpenSnow:
Aspen Mountain: 0.5 inches
Snowmass: 0.5 inches
Copper Mountain: 10 inches
Winter Park: 9 inches
Breckenridge Ski Resort: 9 inches
Arapahoe Basin Ski Area: 8.5 inches
Keystone Resort: 8 inches
Loveland Ski Area: 7 inches
Vail Mountain: 7 inches
Steamboat Resort: 6 inches
Beaver Creek: 6 inches
Irwin: 4.5 inches
Cooper Mountain: 4 inches
Sunlight: 0.5 inches
Friday and Saturday will be dry, while Sunday will bring northern showers. The next storms are forecast to be around March 3-4 and March 6-7, both favoring the northern mountains.
Colorado
Avalanche discipline, power play falters, Central Division lead shrinks in 5-2 loss to Wild
The Colorado Avalanche had a chance Thursday night to regain some real separation between them and the Minnesota Wild.
It didn’t happen, and special teams were again an issue.
Minnesota’s Joel Eriksson Ek scored a pair of power-play goals, while the Avalanche took too many penalties and did not convert its chances with the extra man in a 5-2 loss at Ball Arena. The Wild scored on two of six power plays, both in the second period, then added a shorthanded goal into an empty net for good measure.
“We took six (penalties). Six is too many, especially against a power play like theirs,” Avs coach Jared Bednar said. “We had a slow start to the second and then just kind of started getting going, then took a bunch of penalties and kind of took the momentum away and swung it back in their favor again.”
Mackenzie Blackwood was excellent early in this contest and stopped 31 of 34 shots for the Avs in his first start since the Olympic break. Colorado, which went 0-for-3 on the power play, has not scored an extra-man goal in back-to-back games since Dec. 31 and Jan. 3. The Avs are 2-for-31 with the man advantage since Jan. 16, and at 15.1% are last in the NHL.
The Wild are now just five points behind the Avs in the Central Division, though Colorado has two games in hand. Filip Gustavsson made 44 saves for the visitors.
“I think we crated enough chances to win the hockey game,” Bednar said. “We give up the (second power-play goal) and that’s the difference in the hockey game for me. We had a chance (on the power play) … we score and it’s a tie game. We haven’t had an easy time capitalizing on some of our chances that we created in the last month.
“I’d like to see that turn around a little bit.”
Minnesota took advantage of three penalties on Colorado in a span of 53 seconds to take the lead with 2:23 left in the second period. Captain Gabe Landeskog was sent to the box for elbowing Eriksson Ek away from the play at 14:15 and Valeri Nichushkin was called for cross-checking at 15:04.
That gave the Wild a 5-on-3, but it went from bad to worse in a hurry for the home side. Brock Nelson won the 3-on-5 in his own end, but Brent Burns’ backhanded attempt to clear the puck out of the zone went into the stands for a delay of game.
Minnesota had a 5-on-3 for 1:56, which Colorado successfully killed off, but because Burns’ two minutes didn’t start until Landeskog’s penalty ended, there was more 5-on-4 time and Eriksson Ek scored his second of the night. The Swedish Olympian was trying to send a cross-crease pass to Kirill Kaprizov, but it hit the inside of Blackwood’s right leg and pinballed across the goal line.
Because of the extended penalty time, both Eriksson Ek and Boldy officially logged a shift of more than four minutes, leading to that goal.
“I’m not a big fan of the penalties we took, necessarily,” Landeskog said. “Obviously, mine is a penalty. Val, I felt like he was protecting himself and Burns, that’s a penalty. There’s nothing to argue about there. But yeah, that tilts the ice for sure and just gives them unnecessary momentum.
“So yeah, undisciplined and we’ve got to be better there for sure.”
Eriksson Ek put Minnesota in front at 7:48 of the second period. Cale Makar was called for slashing when his one-handed swipe while Yakov Trenin was attempting to shoot from the left wing. Trenin’s stick broke, so Makar went to the box.
Blackwood made the initial save on Matt Boldy’s shot from the high slot, but Eriksson Ek was there near the left post to clean up the rebound.
Martin Necas continued his hot run with a goal to even the score at 13:30 of the middle frame. Nathan MacKinnon picked up the puck in his own zone and carried it into the offensive end. He left a drop pass for Necas near the right point and then played fullback, driving Wild defenseman Daemon Hunt back to give Necas space and then providing a screen on a lethal wrist shot from his Czech linemate.
That was Necas’ 24th goal of the season. He added a second goal in the final minute after the Wild had built a three-goal advantage to give him 25 on the season.
It’s also three in two games since the Olympic break. Necas had three goals and eight points in five games for Czechia at the Olympics in Milan, equaling his country’s record for points at the event.
MacKinnon missed Colorado’s first game back on Wednesday because of maintenance. He actually slipped to third in the NHL scoring race as of Thursday morning, in part because Tampa Bay’s Nikita Kucherov has now has 53 points in his past 23 games to track down MacKinnon and Edmonton’s Connor McDavid to make it a three-man race for the Art Ross Trophy.
McDavid (five times) and Kucherov (three) have combined to win the Art Ross in eight of the past nine years. MacKinnon has never won it, but has finished second each of the past two seasons.
Minnesota scored a second goal off a Colorado player to make it a 3-1 game and then added two empty-net tallies around Necas’ second goal to seal the Wild’s sixth win in a row.
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Colorado
Firefighters stop spread of wildfire in Colorado’s Golden Gate Canyon
Late Thursday morning, a house fire spreading into the nearby woods in Colorado’s Golden Gate Canyon prompted officials to issue a pre-evacuation order to nearby residents. Firefighters have since brought the blaze under control.
According to the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, a house fire broke out around 11:30 a.m. in the 10600 block of Ralston Creek Road in Golden Gate Canyon, located around 25 miles west of Denver. The fire then began to spread into the nearby trees and grass.
Multiple fire units quickly responded to the scene, and the JCSO issued a pre-evacuation notice to all residents within a three-mile radius, warning them to be prepared to leave at a moment’s notice.
At 12:34 p.m., the sheriff’s office announced that the fire is no longer spreading and the burn area has been contained to less than an acre. A photo shared by JCSO shows a structure nearly completely destroyed by the fire.
Pre-evacuation orders were lifted around 1 p.m.
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