{"id":567288,"date":"2026-03-27T06:54:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-27T06:54:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/567288\/"},"modified":"2026-03-27T06:54:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T06:54:08","slug":"mackinnon-scores-twice-in-3rd-avalanche-hold-off-jets-to-extend-central-lead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/567288\/","title":{"rendered":"MacKinnon scores twice in 3rd, Avalanche hold off Jets to extend Central lead"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jack Drury<\/a> also scored, and Artturi Lehkonen<\/a> had an assist in his return from an upper-body injury for the Avalanche (48-13-10), who went undefeated on a four-game road trip. Mackenzie Blackwood<\/a>\u00a0made 22 saves.<\/p>\n

\u201cReally mature (game),\u201d Blackwood said. \u201cThey played a really hard game, didn’t get frustrated. We haven’t had a lot of success here scoring goals, but stuck with it and didn’t get down and capitalized.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lehkonen missed 11 games after sustaining the injury in the first period of a 4-2 win at the Los Angeles Kings on March 2.<\/p>\n

\u201cGood defensive hockey overall,\u201d MacKinnon said. \u201cObviously, four in a row on the road is a great road trip. So, we’re happy with our home game against Dallas (a 2-1 shootout win on March 18) before the roadie, then we had a great road trip.\u201d<\/p>\n

Colorado extended its first-place lead in the Central Division to nine points over the Dallas Stars.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe’re still fighting for first place, so every win’s important until they put the mark beside our standings,\u201d Bednar said. \u201cSo, we have something to play for down the stretch run here. And we’ve had a good year, but we’re not comfortable — we\u2019re still just kind of fine-tuning our game for going into the playoffs. The Jets have their business to take care of. But you’re playing hungry teams every night that are jockeying for position, trying to fight into the playoffs, trying to move up the standings.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mark Scheifele<\/a> scored twice, and Connor Hellebuyck<\/a>\u00a0made 32 saves for the Jets (30-30-12), who had won two in a row, but have lost four of six (2-2-2).<\/p>\n

\u201c(Hellebuyck) made some big saves when we needed him to,\u201d Scheifele said. \u201cAnd, you know, we battled \u2018til the end. I think we showed a lot of resilience against a really good hockey team.\u201d<\/p>\n

Winnipeg remained five points behind the Nashville Predators for the second wild card into the Stanley Cup Playoffs from the Western Conference.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery game is huge for us, no matter the opponent,\u201d Jets forward Cole Perfetti<\/a>\u00a0said. \u201cAt this stage of the year for us, we need two points every single night, so it doesn’t matter who we’re playing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Scheifele gave Winnipeg a 1-0 lead at 9:55 of the first period. After Josh Morrissey<\/a> stopped a clearing attempt at the Colorado blue line, he quickly gave it to Kyle Connor<\/a>, who then fed Scheifele a backhand from the slot for a one-timer from below the left dot.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey’re a good team,\u201d Scheifele said. \u201cThey make a lot of plays. They got some pretty dynamic players on the other side. \u2026 We had our chances, especially early. We had a couple chances to get a few more, and Blackwood made some big saves.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jack Drury also scored, and Artturi Lehkonen had an assist in his return from an upper-body injury for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":567289,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-567288","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\/567288","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=567288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567288\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/567289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=567288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=567288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=567288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}