{"id":689366,"date":"2026-05-23T11:31:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-23T11:31:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/689366\/"},"modified":"2026-05-23T11:31:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-23T11:31:10","slug":"avalanche-face-daunting-task-after-unfamiliar-loss-in-game-2-of-western-final","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/689366\/","title":{"rendered":"Avalanche face daunting task after unfamiliar loss in Game 2 of Western Final"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Golden Knights earned their 26th comeback win in the regular season and playoffs combined this season when Ivan Barbashev<\/a>\u00a0scored at 11:22 of the third with a screened point shot past Wedgewood\u2019s blocker for a 2-1 lead. Barbashev added an empty-net goal at 18:57.<\/p>\n

The narrative on this night changed when Jack Eichel<\/a>\u00a0scored at 9:15 of the third period.<\/p>\n

Defenseman Sam Malinski<\/a>\u00a0hesitated to play a puck near the attacking blue line and Vegas claimed it, starting their transition game.<\/p>\n

The puck came to Pavel Dorofeyev<\/a>\u00a0in the center of the ice and he blithely touched it over to Eichel streaming down the boards to the left of Wedgewood. Eichel hesitated, freezing defenseman Devon Toews<\/a>\u00a0and forcing Wedgewood to guess a bit. Then he toe-dragged the puck and snapped a shot over Wedgewood\u2019s leg pad and off the far post for his first goal since Game 3 of the first round.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a hell of a shot,\u201d Wedgewood said. \u201cEight inches off the ice, post and in. It\u2019s one you want to get.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wedgewood said he wanted both goals that he allowed back and beat himself up pretty good after the game.<\/p>\n

But, there was plenty of blame to go around.<\/p>\n

The Avalanche scored with 3:01 left in the first, on a goal by Ross Colton<\/a>, and then couldn\u2019t land a knockout blow.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe let them hang around throughout the game,\u201d forward Logan O’Connor<\/a>\u00a0said.<\/p>\n

Coach Jared Bednar pointed to a stretch of 4-on-4 play early in the second period. Colorado had more than a minute of offensive-zone time and had three quality chances. Each player missed the net.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a fine margin for error, the difference of winning and losing,\u201d Bednar said. \u201cThere’s obviously things in the game, especially when you gave up two in the third period, that you don’t like.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere’s a lot of that game that I really liked, and so you\u2019ve got to keep chipping away at the margins and we need to try and win them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Golden Knights earned their 26th comeback win in the regular season and playoffs combined this season when…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":689367,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-689366","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\/689366","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=689366"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689366\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/689367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=689366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=689366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=689366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}