Colorado Avalanche Score Six Goals in Eight Minutes

The Colorado Avalanche set a franchise record when they scored six goals in eight minutes in the second period against the Nashville Predators.

The Colorado Avalanche exploded, if a thing of snow and ice can be said to explode. How else to explain the team’s 9-4 beat-down of the Nashville Predators?

And it came about largely because of the explosion of six goals in the second period, all coming in an eight-minute span. That’s a franchise record, by the way. It’s also the first time in franchise history that Nashville has allowed nine goals in a game.

The game looked to be a tight one. The Avs took an early lead on Cale Makar‘s goal, which came just 49 seconds into the game. The two teams traded goals until the score was tied early in the second.

Then the curse of the former Avs struck as Matt Duchene scored a power play goal to give Nashville its first lead of the game. It would have been easy for a Colorado team, limping through injuries, to fold.

Instead, the six-goal thing happened.

It all started with Joonas Donskoi, who was skating on the top line with Nathan MacKinnon and Matt Calvert. (You read that right — Calvert got promoted from the fourth line to the first.) In fact, both MacKinnon and Calvert assisted on his goal:

I love spin-o-rama goals. I mean, any goal by an Avalanche player is the best, but spin-o-rama goals are fun.

So, the game was back to tied, and it could still go either way. In fact, you could say the Predators had the edge because they’re relatively healthy and playing well.

Ryan Graves said “nyet” — or, probably, no because he’s from Nova Scotia. Just 20 seconds after Donskoi’s goal, he recorded his second goal of the season:

To be honest, it looks a little like Tyson Jost tipped the puck in. However, Jost got a point on that goal, so I don’t want to hear it about him. The Graves-Jost goal put Colorado up 4-3.

Just over a minute later, Andre Burakovsky got in on the fun. He got… demoted, I guess you’d say, to the fourth line with Vladislav Kamenev and TJ Tynan. In fact, Kamenev got an assist on what turned out to be the game-winner:

Takeaways from that goal are that Burakovsky has soft hands, and Samuel Girard can fly when he wants to. That was also the goal that chased Pekka Rinne from the game in favor of Juuse Saros.

That’s when things got interesting — not that three goals in the span of 1:31 was boring. However, with the Avs up just 5-3, technically it was still a wide-open game.

Well, Mark Barberio — in for Ian Cole for some reason — was in the penalty box for tripping. That could have been it, Nashville’s ticket back into the game.

Instead, Long Beach Native Matthew Nieto scored a shortie:

Compher drove the play on that one, but it was Nieto who sealed the deal. Also, welcome to the game, Saros.

After that, first-liner Matt Calvert got in on the fun. It had been a while since the Colorado Avalanche had scored — 2 1/2 whole minutes. They were obviously feeling a little lazy. So, Uncle Calvs scored:

I think it’s fitting that it was a rebound goal, and that Matt was on his back when it went in — that’s just a journeyman way to score.

To complete the second period touchdown, Donskoi scored again just over three minutes later:

This one was originally attributed to Erik Johnson, but Donskoi was eventually awarded credit. By the way, Joonas went on to score his first career hat trick, which we’ll look at in a separate post.

So, there you have it — six goals by five different players in exactly eight minutes. Here’s a quick rundown of the six goals:

The Colorado Avalanche needed this game, and badly. They’ve faced so much adversity lately in the form of injuries to key players. And they’ve been playing some loosey goosey hockey.

Well, hopefully tonight’s game was a harbinger of better things to come for the Avs. It’s still early in the season, but you don’t want to dig yourself into a hole so deep it’s too hard to climb back out.