04/23/26 11:47:00
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04/23 23:45 CDT Avalanche get a pair of lucky goals and hold off Kings 4-2,
taking a 3-0 series lead
Avalanche get a pair of lucky goals and hold off Kings 4-2, taking a 3-0 series
lead
By GREG BEACHAM
AP Sports Writer
LOS ANGELES (AP) --- Cale Makar scored the tiebreaking goal, Scott Wedgewood
made 24 saves and the top-seeded Colorado Avalanche moved to the brink of the
second round of the Stanley Cup playoffs with a 4-2 victory over the Los
Angeles Kings on Thursday night.
Gabriel Landeskog and Artturi Lehkonen scored on fortunate deflections for the
Presidents' Trophy-winning Avalanche, who went up 3-0 in the series with
another narrow win over the persistent Kings.
Trevor Moore and Adrian Kempe scored and Anton Forsberg stopped 19 shots for
the Kings. They are a loss away from being eliminated in the first round for
the fifth consecutive season.
Game 4 is Sunday in Los Angeles. A loss would end the 20-year career of Kings
captain Anze Kopitar, who is retiring after the season.
Los Angeles scored two goals for the first time in the series, but couldn't
find a tying goal after Kempe scored on a power play with 4:03 to play.
Instead, Brock Nelson scored into LA's empty net with 2:18 left.
Los Angeles hasn't won a playoff round in six previous tries since raising the
Stanley Cup in 2014, and this loss was the Kings' seventh straight postseason
defeat dating to last spring.
After grinding out a pair of 2-1 victories in Denver, the Avalanche again took
care of business in LA with fundamentally sound hockey --- and a good bit of
luck this time.
Landeskog put the Avs ahead in the opening minutes with a fluke goal when his
wrist shot hit the end boards and caromed back perfectly to deflect in off
Forsberg's skate.
Colorado then got another fortunate bounce during a Kings power play in the
third period. When Lehkonen and Logan O'Connor broke out on an odd-man rush,
Lehkonen's pass deflected off the back of Kempe's skate and ricocheted through
Forsberg's legs with 12:21 to play.
Los Angeles played another strong defensive game against superstar Nathan
MacKinnon --- who still hasn't scored a goal --- and the powerhouse Avs. But
offense remains the fatal flaw of the Kings, who were the only team in the
bottom third of the NHL in scoring to make the playoffs.
Los Angeles has four goals on 76 shots against Colorado.
Bolstered by their home crowd, the Kings responded to Landeskog's lucky goal
early in Game 3 with appropriate urgency. After controlling stretches of play,
LA evened it early in the second period when Quinton Byfield backhanded a puck
to the crease for Moore to deflect home.
But Makar put Colorado back ahead later in the second, dangling just inside the
blue line and firing a brilliant wrist shot through traffic into the top
corner. The perennial Norris Trophy candidate has 23 playoff goals ---
second-most among active defensemen --- in 82 career games, memorably scoring
eight during his Conn Smythe Trophy-winning performance during the Avs'
championship run in 2022.
___
AP NHL: https://apnews.com/NHL
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