Colorado Avalanche: April Fools as Team Scores 9

Though the Colorado Avalanche score looks like an April Fool’s joke, it is, in fact, legitimate.

April Fool’s joke! The Colorado Avalanche scored nine goals against the Arizona Coyotes in their March 31 game.

Oh, wait, they actually did that. The Avs beat the ‘Yotes by a score of 9-3.

Ok. April Fool’s! Joonas Donskoi scored a hat trick in the first period.

Oh, wait, that actually happened, too. He actually scored a hat trick just 7:31 into the game. We’ll actually look at those goals here in a minute.

Well, April Fool’s! Nathan MacKinnon threw a helmet at Arizona winger Conor Garland. Actually, no, he did that and even received a 10-minute misconduct. Here’s the play.

That’s actually pretty funny. MacKinnon first rips the helmet off Garland’s head then throws it at him. Our sniper has that Irish temper.

In the end, Colorado got goals from not only Donskoi, but also Pierre-Edouard Bellemare, Mikko Rantanen, two from Gabriel Landeskog and two from Andre Burakovsky.

On to the Donskoi hat trick, though. It started with some hard work down low by Tyson Jost. He worked his way around to the front of the net and whipped the puck at the goal. Donskoi was on the far side, so he was in the perfect position to cash in on the rebound.

It was the first goal of the game.

Scoring cam quickly after with Andre Burakovsy scoring 27 seconds later and with Arizona countering just 10 seconds later. Almost a whole minute passed before another goal was scored — Bellemare 55 seconds after the Coyotes goal.

Donskoi decided to get in on the fun again at that point. A mere 28 seconds after Bellemare’s goal, he struck again.

In fact, he seemed to have made the area to the right of the goalie his office space. This time he was in the perfect position to cash in on Ryan Graves’ attempt.

At just 6:04 into the game, Colorado had already scored four goals. Actually, they scored all four goals in exactly two minutes.

The pace of the game slowed down and it took almost a minute-and-a-half for the Avs to strike again. And it was Donskoi again.

Arizona was getting understandably frazzled by that time. Here they were down 4-1 barely seven minutes into the game, and they took the worst kind of penalty — too many men on the ice. You just don’t want to be taking that kind of penalty since it’s just inattention and doesn’t save a goal or make a point.

So, the Avs were on the power play. Landeskog set up Rantanen, who set up Donskoi for the hattie.

My personal favorite part — besides the total domination of the ‘Yotes — is that Jost got so excited he didn’t just squirt water in Donskoi’s face — he squirted his whole water bottle!

In all, Donskoi scored his hat trick in just over three minutes. So impressive.

The score and the actions look like an April Fool’s joke. However, the Colorado Avalanche legitimately trounced the Arizona Coyotes 9-3.