But that\u2019s\u00a0Lehkonen, finding a way to score whether it\u2019s short-handed, power play, 5-on-5, intentional, unintentional, doesn\u2019t matter.<\/p>\n
Lehkonen is always a dependable player for the Avalanche, but he seems to hit his stride in the playoffs. He leads the Avalanche with three points (two goals, one assist) heading into Game 4 of the Western Conference First Round against the Los Angeles Kings at Crypto.com Arena on Sunday (4:30 p.m. ET; HBO MAX, FDSNSC, truTV, TNT, ALT, TVAS2, SNP, SNW, SN360.)<\/p>\n
The Avalanche lead the best-of-7 series 3-0.<\/p>\n
The 30-year-old has 336 points (165 goals, 171 assists) in 660 career regular-season games with the Montreal Canadiens and Avalanche. He has 50 points (28 goals, 22 assists) in 81 career playoff games. That includes 14 points (eight goals, six assists) in 20 games in 2021-22, when he helped the Avalanche win the Stanley Cup.<\/p>\n
He continues to be a threat at left wing on the top forward line with center Nathan MacKinnon<\/a> and right wing Martin Necas<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s always a special player in the playoffs,\u201d MacKinnon said. \u201cI think the style of game he plays thrives in the playoffs. He plays a very hard, inside game. He has such a great attitude. Every shift he\u2019s going to give it his all and play his best, so we\u2019re lucky to have him.\u201d<\/p>\n For Avalanche coach Jared Bednar, Lehkonen\u2019s great playoff work starts with habits.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a guy who is dialed in on both the offensive side of things and the defensive side of things. I think he\u2019s one of our most intelligent players, he understands exactly what we\u2019re trying to do within the structure of our game, how the game\u2019s played,\u201d Bednar said. \u201cAnd he\u2019s just a fierce competitor as well. When you take the competitive side of it, the intelligence side of it, the ability that he has, it\u2019s loose pucks, 50-50 pucks, he\u2019s always winning his touches to advance it, to get it to the open man. He understands where they are and how to make that happen.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"But that\u2019s\u00a0Lehkonen, finding a way to score whether it\u2019s short-handed, power play, 5-on-5, intentional, unintentional, doesn\u2019t matter. Lehkonen…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":559528,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5126],"tags":[5,186,1760,240,5303,793,145,5304,5302,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-559625","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles-kings","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-kings","10":"tag-la","11":"tag-la-kings","12":"tag-lakings","13":"tag-los-angeles","14":"tag-los-angeles-kings","15":"tag-losangeles","16":"tag-losangeleskings","17":"tag-nhl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116468613366566196","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559625","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=559625"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559625\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/559528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=559625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=559625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=559625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}