{"id":580279,"date":"2026-05-21T12:36:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T12:36:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/580279\/"},"modified":"2026-05-21T12:36:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T12:36:14","slug":"nathan-mackinnon-didnt-sugarcoat-why-the-avalanche-lost-to-the-golden-knights-in-game-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/580279\/","title":{"rendered":"Nathan MacKinnon didn\u2019t sugarcoat why the Avalanche lost to the Golden Knights in Game 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the first time in the 2026 NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs, Nathan MacKinnon<\/a> and the Colorado Avalanche<\/a> find themselves behind the 8-ball.<\/p>\n

The Avs are behind early in their Western Conference Finals series against the Vegas Golden Knights<\/a>, who won Game 1 on Wednesday, 4-2, at Ball Arena in Denver, Colo.<\/p>\n

It was a tough loss to swallow for Colorado because the team dominated the possession battle, only to struggle to find the back of the net.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Avalanche went scoreless in the first two periods. They cut Vegas\u2019 lead to one goal, 3\u20132, on back-to-back goals from Valeri Nichushkin<\/a> and Gabriel Landeskog<\/a> in the third frame before Golden Knights forward Nic Dowd<\/a> put the game out of reach with an empty-net insurance goal with under a minute to go in regulation.<\/p>\n

It all boiled down to one word for MacKinnon: execution.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe just weren\u2019t sharp. Execution was poor from everybody,\u201d MacKinnon told reporters after the game, via Ryan Boulding of NHL.com<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe had chances. They didn\u2019t do a whole lot either. It was kind of a nothing game, and then they got a few goals. Really good team, obviously, but I thought we did a lot of damage to ourselves. Yeah, just guys kind of everywhere. Execution, like I said, needs to be better. Obviously, we\u2019re capable of being better than that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Colorado outshot (shots on goal) the Golden Knights in the game, 38-28. The Avalanche had plenty of great scoring chances, but failed to capitalize. They had 16 high-danger even-strength shots<\/a> to just 7 by Vegas.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Additionally, the Avs had 80 total shot attempts (shots on goal, missed shots and blocked shots) while the Golden Knights only generated 52.\u00a0<\/p>\n

MacKinnon was right to feel disappointed, but he and the Avalanche can still rectify things beginning in Game 2 on Friday at Ball Arena.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the first time in the 2026 NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs, Nathan MacKinnon and the Colorado Avalanche find…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":580280,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5116],"tags":[193,192,144,5277,5,517,4,62845,39],"class_list":["post-580279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-colorado-avalanche","tag-avalanche","tag-colorado","tag-colorado-avalanche","tag-coloradoavalanche","tag-hockey","tag-nathan-mackinnon","tag-nhl","tag-nhl-playoffs-2026","tag-vegas-golden-knights"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116612601246940258","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580279","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=580279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580279\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/580280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=580279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=580279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=580279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}