{"id":521827,"date":"2026-03-25T10:39:42","date_gmt":"2026-03-25T10:39:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/521827\/"},"modified":"2026-03-25T10:39:42","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T10:39:42","slug":"martin-necas-avalanche-pay-penguins-back-with-blowout-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/521827\/","title":{"rendered":"Martin Necas, Avalanche pay Penguins back with blowout win"},"content":{"rendered":"

PITTSBURGH \u2014 Eight days after the worst loss of the season<\/a>, the Colorado Avalanche took advantage of an opportunity to exact some payback.<\/p>\n

The Avs came to PPG Paints Arena and while it looked far from a masterpiece at times, routed the Pittsburgh Penguins in a 6-2 victory.<\/p>\n

Martin Necas scored twice, Scott Wedgewood made 30 saves and both special teams units made an impact in the club\u2019s third straight victory. This same Penguins team walloped the Avs, 7-2, at Ball Arena last week.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were plenty of games we played this season that we played better than tonight,\u201d Avs captain Gabe Landeskog said<\/a>. \u201cI think the first period, we were opportunistic. We created some chances, and we were able to put them in the back of the net.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy no stretch was that our best game, especially offensively. I thought we checked hard. I thought we worked hard. Thought the details were there on the defensive side of things, but offensively the juice just wasn\u2019t quite there. And that\u2019s OK \u2014 you\u2019ve got to find a way to win like that too.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ColoradoColorado Avalanche’s Nathan MacKinnon (29) puts a shot behind Pittsburgh Penguins goaltender Arturs Silovs (37) for a goal during the first period of an NHL hockey game in Pittsburgh, Tuesday, March 24, 2026. (AP Photo\/Gene J. Puskar)<\/p>\n

Nathan MacKinnon opened the scoring with his league-leading 46th goal of the season. He took the puck off Parker Wotherspoon near the blue line in his own end, then went by the Pittsburgh defenseman and snapped one just under the crossbar on the partial breakaway.<\/p>\n

Pittsburgh answered with an Egor Chinakhov goal at 8:09 of the first. Former Avs defenseman Samuel Girard set him up. Girard wasn\u2019t able to play when these teams met last week because of an injury, but that was his second point with Pittsburgh since the trade late last month that sent him here with a second-round pick for Brett Kulak.<\/p>\n

At the midpoint of the first period, the Avs looked second-best, one great play from MacKinnon aside. Then, the puck started going in.<\/p>\n

Sam Malinski\u2019s first shot was blockered away by Arturs Silvos, but when the puck came back to the Colorado defenseman later in the shift he didn\u2019t miss. His wrist shot through traffic made it a 2-1 game at 15:24.<\/p>\n

Necas scored his first of the night on the power play 80 seconds later. Josh Manson drew a tripping penalty behind the Colorado net, and five seconds after the ensuing faceoff, Necas blew a one-timer from Cale Makar past Silvos to extend the lead.<\/p>\n

Parker Kelly capped the flurry 35 seconds later. Logan O\u2019Connor, making his season debut after multiple ailments caused him to miss the first 69 games<\/a>, corralled the puck behind the Pittsburgh net and snapped a pass to Kelly for a goal in front at 17:19.<\/p>\n

It was far from the Avalanche\u2019s best period of the season, but it was also 4-1 at the first intermission.<\/p>\n

\u201c(Wedgewood) was outstanding,\u201d Avs coach Jared Bednar said. \u201cSloppy game for us. We capitalized and made some nice places to score some goals, but we also beat the puck up quite a bit and had some turnovers. When we did that, (Wedgewood) made some huge saves. It was just that simple.\u201d<\/p>\n

Necas added the lone goal that counted in the middle period. He was in the right place to bang home the rebound of a Devon Toews shot from the top of the offensive zone with 2:31 left in a period where the visitors didn\u2019t create a lot of offensive looks.<\/p>\n

That is now 34 goals and 88 points this season for Necas. Both are already career-best marks, but his hot streak since the Olympic break has given him a real chance to reach 40 goals and 100 points. He leads the NHL with 12 goals and is second with 26 points since the hiatus.<\/p>\n

Pittsburgh thought it had made the score 4-2 at 7:38 of the second, but the Avs challenged for goaltender inference and got a Justin Brazeau tally overturned. Brazeau made contact with Wedgewood at the edge of the crease at about the same time Ryan Shea took the initial shot. Then Brazeau made further contact with Wedgewood as he went to get the rebound.<\/p>\n

Shortly after that, the Avs had to kill off Nazem Kadri\u2019s double-minor for high-sticking. Colorado erased both ends of the penalty and created multiple shorthanded odd-man rushes. The Avs also had to kill off 63 seconds of a 5-on-3 in the third period, and Wedgewood made a few great saves to do so.<\/p>\n

The Avs\u2019 penalty kill struggled right after the Olympic break, but the PK is now 18 of 20 (90.0%) in the past seven games.<\/p>\n

Ross Colton, who like O\u2019Connor returned from an injury absence in this contest, scored into an empty net with 3:40 remaining for his ninth of the season.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll take it,\u201d Bednar said. \u201cIt certainly wasn\u2019t the game or performance that we were, but it was certainly the result we were looking for.\u201d<\/p>\n

Want more Avalanche news? Sign up for the Avalanche Insider to get all our NHL analysis.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PITTSBURGH \u2014 Eight days after the worst loss of the season, the Colorado Avalanche took advantage of an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":521828,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[377],"tags":[193,1466,1116,144,1543,5,1544,1180,1038,513,1262,517,2054,4,6295,1340,2565,43],"class_list":["post-521827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-hockey","tag-avalanche","tag-ball-arena","tag-cale-makar","tag-colorado-avalanche","tag-devon-toews","tag-hockey","tag-josh-manson","tag-latest-headlines","tag-logan-oconnor","tag-martin-necas","tag-more-avalanche-news","tag-nathan-mackinnon","tag-nazem-kadri","tag-nhl","tag-parker-kelly","tag-samuel-girard","tag-scott-wedgewood","tag-sports"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116289392930876377","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521827","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=521827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521827\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/521828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=521827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=521827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=521827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}