Nathan MacKinnon had three goals and an assist, Joonas Donskoi had two goals and an assist, and the host Colorado Avalanche beat the St. Louis Blues 6-3 in Denver in Game 2 of their West Division first-round series on Wednesday night.
Brandon Saad also scored, Philipp Grubauer stopped 32 shots and Gabriel Landeskog and Mikko Rantanen had two assists each for Colorado, which leads the series 2-0. Game 3 is Friday night in St. Louis.
Mike Hoffman, Brayden Schenn and Sammy Blais had goals, Torey Krug had two assists and Jordan Binnington made 29 saves for the Blues.
St. Louis had several players test positive for COVID-19 and they were in danger of missing the game, but the NHL said the tests were false positives. Players were retested and the results were negative.
The Blues were down to five defenseman after Robert Bortuzzo was injured in the second period, and then they lost another when Justin Falk was hit with an illegal check by Nazem Kadri early in the third. Kadri was given a major and a match penalty.
St. Louis took advantage of the five-minute power play when Schenn scored on a rebound at 10:07 to pull within 3-2.
MacKinnon’s goal at 15:25 made it 4-2, but just 15 seconds later, Hoffman’s shot went off Grubauer and in to get St. Louis within one.
Saad scored into an empty net at 17:51, and MacKinnon completed the hat trick with another empty-net goal at 19:48. MacKinnon has five goals in the first two games.
Colorado jumped in front with a goal just 35 seconds into the game when a turnover went to Ryan Graves at the point. His shot was tipped by Donskoi and past Binnington.
MacKinnon scored a power-play goal at 18:05 of the first, and his shot from the top of the zone hit Donskoi and went in to make it 3-0 3:14 of the second. It was Donskoi’s second goal of the playoffs.
The Blues got some life late in the second when Blais’ sharp-angle shot went off Grubauer and in at 16:17. It was his first of the playoffs.
–Field Level Media