Wedgewood makes 28 saves for Colorado; New York has 4-game winning streak end
NYI at COL | Recap
DENVER — Scott Wedgewood made 28 saves for the Colorado Avalanche, who extended their point streak to 10 games with a 4-1 victory against the New York Islanders at Ball Arena on Sunday.
“[It’s] obviously important taking advantage of home ice,” Wedgewood said. “It was a hard-fought game, it got chippy. I think it was pretty even on both sides for most of it. They [got] a fluky goal early, but [I’m] proud of the guys for battling back and taking the two points.”
Wedgewood made 11 saves in the third period to preserve a one-goal lead for Colorado, including getting across the crease to stop a one-timer from Bo Horvat while the Islanders were on the power play with 1:34 remaining.
“I thought both goalies probably made a couple nice saves, but ‘Wedge’ did his best work on the penalty kill,” Colorado coach Jared Bednar said. “Penalty kill was good. Their power play, I thought, was really good, and ‘Wedge’ is our best penalty killer. To me, that’s the difference in the hockey game.”
Said Islanders coach Patrick Roy: “We could have done a little bit better job having bodies in front of the net and try to take his eyes away from the puck, but he made some great saves. I mean, come on. Just the save at the end, side to side on Bo Horvat, or the save on [Kyle] Palmieri from the pocket. I mean, come on, they were like grade A chances.”
NYI@COL: Wedgewood denies Horvat late in the 3rd
Brock Nelson had a goal and an assist, and Victor Olofsson, Ross Colton and Martin Necas scored for the Avalanche (13-1-5), who have won six straight and are 8-0-2 during the point streak.
“I think you’ve got two teams checking the right way, playing tight defensively, not a lot going on offensively,” Bednar said. “So, it was a little bit of a grind on both sides of it. You play the game that’s in front of you, that’s what it is, so you got to find a way to just keep grinding through it and chip in one more than they do, and we were able to do that tonight.”
Emil Heineman scored, and Ilya Sorokin made 24 saves for the Islanders (10-7-2), who had won the first four games of their seven-game road trip.
“It was a hard-fought game. I thought we played really well, and their goaltender was the story of the game,” Roy said. “He made some really good saves, especially on our power play. I mean, we had a lot of good looks, and he made those saves. I thought it was a great team effort. I mean, it was probably our best game of the road trip, to be honest. I thought we played really well.”
Heineman gave New York a 1-0 lead at 2:05 of the first period when Tony DeAngelo‘s shot from the top of the right circle deflected five-hole off his left skate in the low slot.
“It was a good hockey game, I think that’s what it was tonight,” Islanders captain Anders Lee said. “I thought both teams played well at times, and both goaltenders were great. Special teams, it had it all. We just found ourselves down one late and couldn’t find a find a [goal].”
Colton tied it 1-1 at 4:32 of the second period. He received a stretch pass from Cale Makar, skated in on a rush, and scored short side from the left circle with a wrist shot that went under the blocker arm of Sorokin.
Olofsson gave Colorado a 2-1 lead at 5:51, redirecting Sam Malinski’s shot from the right point over Sorokin’s glove.
“I tried to do it, and sometimes you get lucky,” Olofsson said. “It was a good shot by Sam, and I just tried to get my stick on it. It’s tough to kind of know where your redirections are going sometimes, but I was lucky it found the back of the net.”
NYI@COL: Olofsson redirects Malinski’s blast to put the Avalanche on top
Necas scored an empty-net goal from the defensive zone to make it 3-1 at 19:25 of the third period, and Nelson redirected Brent Burns’ wrist shot from above the right circle to make it 4-1 at 19:44.
“We’re finding different ways to scrape points together,” Avalanche captain Gabriel Landeskog said. “It’s not always pretty, but our team has been resilient so far this season, and I think it’s been a good start and we want to keep going.”
NOTES: Avalanche forward Nathan MacKinnon had his 11-game point streak end (eight goals, 15 assists). … Heineman has scored nine goals in 19 games this season. He scored 10 goals in 62 games as a rookie with the Montreal Canadiens last season.
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