Ducks squander early lead, get blown out by Avalanche
Adam Henrique scored one goal and assisted on two others. Troy Terry scored one goal and set up another. Derek Grant scored his first goal of the season by converting on the first penalty shot of his career. Ryan Miller got plenty of offensive support.
Then the second period started.
Nathan MacKinnon scored the tiebreaking goal while Colorado was on a third-period power play and the Avalanche rallied for an 8-4 victory Tuesday over the Ducks in Denver. The Avalanche extended the Ducks’ losing streak to four consecutive games.
Colorado scored six unanswered goals, two in the second and four in the third, to erase the Ducks’ 4-2 lead after the first period. MacKinnon broke a 4-4 tie 1:01 into the final period and Samuel Girard extended the Avalanche’s lead to 6-4 at 3:24.
Pierre-Edouard Bellemare (empty net) and Brandon Saad (power play) also scored in the final period.
Ducks captain Ryan Getzlaf blamed himself and linemates Max Comtois and Rickard Rakell for letting down their teammates with a lackluster effort, especially defensively. Getzlaf and Comtois were on the ice for three of Colorado’s goals; Rakell was on the ice for four.
“We’re going to wear this for our team,” Getzlaf said. “I thought our guys did a great job of going out and getting momentum at different times in that game. It seemed like every time we stepped on the ice the play was in our zone or the puck was in our net.
“We’ve got to look at our game and accept responsibility for that.”
Miller started in place of injured No. 1 goaltender John Gibson, who was scratched because of an unspecified lower body injury. Miller started for the second consecutive game for the first time this season, after he was in goal for the Ducks’ 3-1 loss Saturday to San Jose.
Miller also replaced Gibson for the final 10:44 of Friday’s 6-0 loss to the Sharks.
“Mid-morning,” Ducks coach Dallas Eakins said of learning when Gibson couldn’t play.
Miller and Colorado starter Hunter Miska were under siege from the opening minutes. Each team scored twice in the opening 7:02, with Andre Burakovsky and Nazem Kadri scoring for the Avalanche and Terry and Danton Heinen scoring for the Ducks.
Trevor Zegras, a 19-yearold rookie, assisted on Terry’s goal for his third NHL point. Zegras was denied by the goal post on a secondperiod breakaway attempt in a bid for his first goal. Henrique sent him ahead of the pack with an alert pass from his own end of the ice.
Henrique gave the Ducks a 3-2 lead at 15:59 of the first period. Grant then extended it to 4-2 by beating Miska on a penalty shot after Gabriel Landeskog tripped him at 19:42. Grant fired his penalty shot past Miska’s glove to give the Ducks their first four-goal period of the season.
The good times and the lead didn’t last.
Philipp Grubauer replaced Miska, who gave up four goals on only seven shots. Mikko Rantanen scored on a no-look shot from a sharp angle and Kadri scored on a deflection of Burakovsky’s perimeter shot to tie it 4-4 by the end of the second period.