{"id":554547,"date":"2026-03-21T08:16:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-21T08:16:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/554547\/"},"modified":"2026-03-21T08:16:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-21T08:16:08","slug":"avalanche-defeat-blackhawks-become-1st-team-to-clinch-playoff-berth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/554547\/","title":{"rendered":"Avalanche defeat Blackhawks, become 1st team to clinch playoff berth"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wyatt Kaiser<\/a> scored, and Arvid Soderblom<\/a>\u00a0made 45 saves for the Blackhawks (26-31-12), who won 2-1 at the Minnesota Wild on Thursday. Chicago is eight points behind the Los Angeles Kings for the second wild card into the playoffs from the Western Conference.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t have it tonight,\u201d\u00a0Blackhawks coach Jeff Blashill said. \u201cI thought they (the Avalanche) came out and played really, really well. They snapped the puck around well. They were skating. We weren\u2019t skating. Too many times we were just kind of standing still, with and without the puck. Then you\u2019re in a grind.\u201d<\/p>\n

Necas gave the Avalanche a 1-0 lead at 13:19 of the first period. Nichushkin carried the puck into the slot after taking a drop pass from MacKinnon and backhanded a pass to Necas, who put the puck into the net off Soderblom\u2019s left arm from the left face-off circle.<\/p>\n

The three-point game gave\u00a0Necas a career-high 84 points (32 goals, 52 assists). He had 83 last season, when he played for the Carolina Hurricanes and Colorado.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, it feels good,\u201d he said. \u201cLet\u2019s keep it rolling. I think if you just play like that, there aren\u2019t many games we\u2019re going to lose. Just a strong overall game. Both goalies (Blackwood and Scott Wedgewood<\/a>)\u00a0played the last couple of games great, and just keep it rolling.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brock Nelson<\/a> made it 2-0 on the power play at 15:22. Cale Makar<\/a> wound up from the high slot, hesitated and passed the puck toward the net before Nelson redirected it from in front.<\/p>\n

The Avalanche outshot the Blackhawks 20-5 in the period.<\/p>\n

Kaiser brought the Blackhawks to within 2-1 at 6:48 of the second period. The defenseman took a feed in the slot from Ryan Greene<\/a>\u00a0and put a forehand shot between the pads of Blackwood.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know if he was going to find me,\u201d Kaiser said. \u201cI just knew they were changing and we were kind of changing. So I just tried to jump in the middle to at least give \u2018Greener\u2019 some option. It landed on my stick. What a pass.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nazem Kadri<\/a> scored on the power play at 36 seconds of the third period for a 3-1 Colorado lead. MacKinnon took the puck in front of the net and made a no-look, backhand pass to Kadri, who scored from low in the right circle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wyatt Kaiser scored, and Arvid Soderblom\u00a0made 45 saves for the Blackhawks (26-31-12), who won 2-1 at the Minnesota…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":554548,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-554547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=554547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554547\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/554548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=554547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=554547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=554547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}