DALLAS (AP) \u2014 Nathan MacKinnon took a stick to the face, had a part in both of Colorado\u2019s strange goals in the second period and capped his night with an empty-netter for his 50th career playoff goal. <\/p>\n
And Mackenzie Blackwood backed up the Avalanche in a big way as the goalie made his playoff debut after 252 regular-season games for three teams over seven seasons.<\/p>\n
Those two goals in the second period put the Avalanche ahead to stay, and Blackwood had 23 saves in a 5-1 win over the Dallas Stars in the opener of their first-round Western Conference playoff series Saturday night. <\/p>\n
\u201cI thought it was solid, really solid,\u201d MacKinnon said of the opener of the Avs\u2019 eighth consecutive postseason. \u201cWe had a lot of good looks, a lot of attempts. Maybe hit the net a little bit more, but I thought we played a pretty solid two-way game.\u201d<\/p>\n
MacKinnon scored on a shot that deflected off Stars defenseman Ilya Lyubushkin, and fluttered past goalie Jake Oettinger late in the second period. That came during an extended power play, a double minor against the Stars after MacKinnon took a high stick to the face.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously they\u2019re going to key on him like we do on some of their players,\u201d coach Jared Bednar said of last season\u2019s NHL MVP. \u201cBut really strong defensive game from him, and obviously get-up and go on the offensive side. He was making plays all night.\u201d<\/p>\n
Blackwood stopped four shots in a span of 11 seconds midway through the second period just before MacKinnon assisted on Artturi Lehkonen\u2019s goal. <\/p>\n
Lehkonen was following his initial shot and falling down after a collision in front of the net when the puck ricocheted off his lower left leg into the top corner of the net. The play was reviewed and officials ruled that there was no kicking motion by Lehkonen while tumbling to the ice with Mavrik Bourque.<\/p>\n
There wasn\u2019t much Oettinger could do on either of those goals as the Stars lost Game 1 in their eighth consecutive series in the NHL playoffs since 2022. They are 0-7 in series openers under coach Pete DeBoer, six of those coming at home.<\/p>\n
\u201cI guess the good news is we\u2019ve come back and won more than our share of those series where we have (lost Game 1),\u201d said DeBoer, whose teams made it to the West final each of the past two seasons. \u201cSo I think we got to concentrate on that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Game 2 is Monday night in Dallas, before the series shifts to Denver.<\/p>\n
Devon Toews gave Colorado a 3-1 lead with 7:04 left. MacKinnon had his empty-net tally with 3:08 left, 11 seconds before Charlie Coyle scored.<\/p>\n
This series-opening loss for the Stars came after they finished the regular season on an 0-5-2 stretch that included four losses at home after being 28-5-3 before that. <\/p>\n
Blackwood is one of 11 players who have seen action since being acquired through Colorado\u2019s eight in-season trades. The goalie, whose first five NHL season where with New Jersey, came from San Jose in December and played in 37 games for the Avs.<\/p>\n
Those deals included the Avalanche trading Mikko Rantanen<\/a> on Jan. 24 to Carolina in the East, He played only 13 games before a deadline deal March 7<\/a> sent him back to the Central Division with the Stars and included a $96 million, eight-year contract extension.<\/p>\n Rantanen, who had 101 points (34 goals, 67 assists) in 81 playoff games for the Avalanche had three shots on goal and one block over 18 minutes in his postseason debut with the Stars. <\/p>\n Oettinger had 19 saves, three when Colorado had a two-man advantage in the first period when Cale Makar drew two tripping penalties only 36 seconds apart from each other. <\/p>\n Roope Hintz, called for penalty against MacKinnon, got the Stars to 2-1 on his goal with 13:15 left in the game, just before the end of a power play and about a minute after DeBoer called a timeout. <\/p>\n Bednar got his 50th playoff win with the Avs \u2014 in his 82nd postseason game, equal to a full regular season. That broke a tie with Bob Hartley for the most wins by a coach in franchise history. Both won Stanley Cups \u2014 Bednar in 2022, and Hartley in 2001.<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n This story has been corrected to show that Blackwood has played seven seasons, not eight.<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n AP NHL playoffs: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/stanley-cup<\/a> and https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/nhl<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DALLAS (AP) \u2014 Nathan MacKinnon took a stick to the face, had a part in both of Colorado\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29857,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5116],"tags":[2320,193,7608,1116,1285,1281,192,144,5277,147,1543,5,3316,424,1117,1123,5583,270,517,285,4,292,2087,1716,43,14,104,3815,1275],"class_list":{"0":"post-29856","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-colorado-avalanche","8":"tag-artturi-lehkonen","9":"tag-avalanche","10":"tag-bob-hartley","11":"tag-cale-makar","12":"tag-charlie-coyle","13":"tag-co-state-wire","14":"tag-colorado","15":"tag-colorado-avalanche","16":"tag-coloradoavalanche","17":"tag-dallas-stars","18":"tag-devon-toews","19":"tag-hockey","20":"tag-ilya-lyubushkin","21":"tag-jake-oettinger","22":"tag-jared-bednar","23":"tag-mackenzie-blackwood","24":"tag-mavrik-bourque","25":"tag-mikko-rantanen","26":"tag-nathan-mackinnon","27":"tag-national-hockey-league","28":"tag-nhl","29":"tag-nhl-hockey","30":"tag-pete-deboer","31":"tag-roope-hintz","32":"tag-sports","33":"tag-stanley-cup","34":"tag-stanley-cup-playoffs","35":"tag-stanley-cups","36":"tag-tx-state-wire"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29856\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}