ST. Louis — Despite gaining an advantage on the second day of their of the series the Colorado Avalanche aren’t satisfied.
Artturi Lehkonen scored twice. Darcy Kuemper stopped 29 shots and the Avalanche defeated the St. Louis Blues 5-2 in Game 3 on Saturday night, taking an advantage of 2-1 for the series that is best of seven.
Logan O’Connor, Nazem Kadri and Gabriel Landeskog also scored as the Avalanche recovered from a loss of 4-1 at home two nights prior and made it 3-0 on the playing on the road during postseason.
“Of course, it was a positive response from the last game” Lehkonen stated. “We remain confident that we’re able to get rid of certain things in our game and then go on to the next game.”
Ryan O’Reilly had a goal and an assist, while Colton Parayko also scored for the Blues who could’ve been without goalie Jordan Binnington.
Binnington had three saves before he left the game at just 6:45 into the opening period when Kadri and Blues defenceman Calle Rosen collided after their skates were tangled into the crease. There was no penalty imposed on the incident.
“Look at the reputation of Kadri,” Blues Coach Craig Berube stated. “That’s all I can say.”
The coach also mentioned the fact that Binnington was being assessed for a lower-body injury
“I only see the puck is loose” Kadri said. “I was watching him from behind and attempted at poking it using my stick. I believe their defenseman sort of hit me, and then pushed me towards the wall. If that hadn’t occurred I don’t think I would have struck him.”
Following the game, when Kadri was interviewed on TV the following day, he claimed that the Blues player was throwing a water bottle at him, and he thought it might be Binnington.
Ville Husso stopped 19 of 23 shots to drop to 3 for the season in the playoffs.
“I believe there was a hint of a shift in momentum there,” O’Connor said about the Blues changing goalie. “I believe that before that, we sensed our game was coming more. We were able to weather the storm early. We were a bit hard on them initially, but really getting into the zone of defense. We then started rolling the puck over a bit more, and gaining a bit more comfortable in the game.”
Game 4 is scheduled for Monday night on Monday night in St. Louis.
Parayko has scored the second of his goals in the postseason with an slap shot from the point at 3:55 into the match to make it 1-0 to St. Louis ahead 1-0.
O’Connor scored his first goal at 11:54, tying it after 11:54. Kadri was next with his second postseason goal after he snuffed out Cale Makar’s shot through Husso shortly when Pavel Buchnevich finished serving an interfering penalty.
Lehkonen made it his 3rd goal goal of the playoffs to bring Colorado ahead 3-1 with just 2:45 left after the first period. Nathan MacKinnon assisted on the goal and gave him points over seven straight playoff games.
O’Reilly scored an assist from Nick Leddy for his seventh postseason goal to draw St. Louis within one with just 29 seconds left in the middle.
“I believe we were kind of more hopeful for a breakthrough,” O’Reilly said about the third quarter. “We were a little off our structure and didn’t have our numbers in the place we needed them to produce some offense. It wasn’t the greatest move for us.”
Landeskog stopped the game from playing after he scored his fifth goal postseason goal with just 2:08 left after Husso had begun to skate off the ice in search of an additional player.
Lehkonen made it two goal of the game after Husso pulled to give Colorado ahead by 5-1 in the closing minute.
