Avalanche extend win streak to 10
Blake Comeau scored the go-ahead goal with 7:43 to play as the Colorado Avalanche beat the Toronto Maple Leafs, 4-2, on Monday to extend their National Hockey League winning streak to 10 games.
Comeau beat a backchecking Auston Matthews to the net and redirected a Carl Soderberg pass through Frederik Andersen to put Colorado ahead for good.
Gabriel Bourque, Nail Yakupov and Gabriel Landeskog, into an empty net, also scored for the Avalanche (27-16-3).
Former Maple Leafs goalie Jonathan Bernier made 29 saves for his ninth straight win in place of injured Semyon Varlamov.
Patrick Marleau and Auston Matthews scored for the Maple Leafs (26-18-5). Andersen stopped 23-of-26 shots in defeat.
Colorado kicked off its winning streak with a 4-3 overtime victory on Dec. 29 at home against the Maple Leafs.
The Maple Leafs announced just before puck drop that defenceman Morgan Rielly was placed on the injured reserve list.
He missed his second straight game because of an upper-body injury suffered Thursday against Philadelphia.
Bourque opened the scoring just 2:19 into the game, banging in the rebound off a Tyson Jost shot that Andersen took in the chest and couldn’t hold on to.
Marleau tied the game only 19 seconds into the second period, blasting a one-timer from the top of the faceoff circle over Bernier’s glove on a set-up from Russian Leo Komarov.
Matthews thought he gave Toronto the lead on a goalmouth scramble, tapping in a loose puck after it hit Zach Hyman in the skate and skipped behind the Avalanche netminder.
But Colorado challenged for goalie interference and it was overturned, leading to an angry Mike Babcock on the Leafs bench.
Bernier was serenaded with some Bronx cheers from the Air Canada Centre crowd throughout much of the second, with the chants growing louder after the called-off goal.
Matthews scored off a William Nylander rebound on his next shift after the disallowed goal, and made sure everyone knew it was a good goal by pointing at the net like an official and showing some rare emotion as he celebrated at 9:17. The lead didn’t last long, though, as Yakupov took a crossice pass from Alexander Kerfoot and beat Andersen at 10:51. NOTES: Nathan MacKinnon, who was named the NHL’s first star of the week earlier in the day with four goals and six points in three Colorado wins, had his ninegame point streak snapped.