Late in the second period, with his team outplaying Colorado, Edmonton coach Todd McLellan could not believe his Oilers were trailing 2-1.
“Jay Woodcroft and I looked at each other and said: ‘How are we losing this game?’” McLellan said.
They did not, thanks to another big game by Connor McDavid.
Photo: AP
McDavid on Sunday scored his third hat-trick of the season and fourth of his career as the Oilers beat the Avalanche 4-2 to snap a six-game losing streak.
McDavid has 11 goals in the past nine games and two hat-tricks.
His first two goals tied the game and his last one was into an empty net with 1 minute, 26 seconds remaining.
“Obviously, the team isn’t finding a way to have success, but it’s a credit to the guys I’m playing with,” McDavid said. “It’s been pretty fluid, I’ve been playing with a bunch of guys, and it’s a credit to them.”
He has five goals in two games against the Avalanche this season.
Ryan Strome also scored and Cam Talbot had 24 saves for the Oilers, who snapped Colorado’s 10-game home winning streak.
The Avalanche had not lost since Dec. 27 last year against Arizona, but failed to match Pittsburgh’s current 11-game home winning streak.
Colorado got goals from Tyson Jost and Alexander Kerfoot, while Semyon Varlamov had 36 saves, but the Avalanche could not take advantage of the return of Nathan MacKinnon.
MacKinnon missed eight games with a left-shoulder injury suffered in Vancouver on Jan. 30.
He was second in the league in scoring when he was injured. He entered Sunday’s game tied for 16th with 61 points.
“I felt fine,” MacKinnon said after logging 22:20 of ice time.
He had a chance to tie it late, but his shot with less than four minutes left hit the post.
Moments later, McDavid sealed it with his team-leading 26th goal.
The Avalanche played most of the third period down two defensemen.
Anton Lindholm left late in the second period after crashing into the boards, while Erik Johnson left early in the third with an undisclosed injury.
“The couple [of] injuries in the back end could hurt us more than just the loss today,” Avalanche coach Jared Bednar said.
Bednar did not specify the injuries, but he was upset at the way his team played after being outshot 15-6 in the third.
“There’s no excuse for the third,” he said. “We played 14 minutes and had three shots on goal in a game we’re trying to win, and need to win at home. No excuse for that.”
The Avalanche took one-goal leads when Jost scored 4:04 into the game and Kerfoot got his 15th with just under seven minutes left in the second period.
Strome nearly tied it at 8:01 of the third, but Varlamov slid over to get a pad on his shot.
He banged his stick on the floor of the bench in frustration after that, but then gave Edmonton their first lead with his first goal in 22 games with 6:42 remaining.
“It’s not for lack of chances, lack of effort or lack of caring. That’s the frustrating part,” said Strome, whose last goal came on Dec. 23 last year against Montreal. “You come to the rink every day, and you try to get better and try to do the right things, and when things aren’t going in it’s kind of frustrating. Nice to get that one.”
Taiwanese world No. 1 women’s doubles star Hsieh Su-wei on Saturday overcame a first-set loss to win her opening match at the Madrid Open. Top seeds Hsieh and partner Elise Mertens of Belgium, with whom she last month won her fourth Indian Wells women’s doubles title, bounced back from a rocky first set to beat Asia Muhammad of the US and Aldila Sutjiadi of Indonesia 2-6, 6-4, 10-2. Hsieh and Mertens were next to face Heather Watson of the UK and Xu Yifan of China in the round of 16. Thirty-eight-year-old Hsieh last month reclaimed her world No. 1 spot after her Indian
EYES ON THE PRIZE: Armed with three solid men’s singles shuttlers and doubles Olympic champions, Taiwan aim to make their first Thomas Cup semi-final, Chou Tien-chen said Taiwanese badminton star Tai Tzu-ying yesterday quickly dispatched Malaysia’s Goh Jin Wei in straight sets, while her male counterpart Chou Tien-chen beat Germany’s Kai Schaefer, as Taiwan’s women’s and men’s teams won their Group B opening rounds of the TotalEnergies BWF Thomas and Uber Cup Finals in Chengdu, China. World No. 5 Tai beat Goh 21-19, 22-20 in a speedy 33 minutes, her fourth straight victory over the world No. 24 shuttler since they first faced each other in the quarter-finals of the 2018 Malaysia Open, where Tai went on to win the women’s singles title. Malaysia followed up Tai’s opening victory
Chen Yi-tung (陳奕通) secured a historic Olympic berth on Sunday by winning the senior men’s foil event at the 2024 Asia Oceania Zonal Olympic Fencing Qualifiers in United Arab Emirates. Chen defeated Samuel Elijah of Singapore 15-4 in the final in Dubai to secure the only wild card in the event, making him the first male Olympian fencer from Taiwan in 36 years and only the sixth Taiwanese fencer to ever qualify for the quadrennial event. The last appearance by a Taiwanese male fencer at the Olympics was in 1988, when Wang San-tsai (王三財) and Cheng Ming-hsiang (鄭明祥) competed in Seoul. The
Rafael Nadal on Tuesday lost in straight sets to 31st-ranked Jiri Lehecka in the fourth round at the Madrid Open, while Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei advanced to the semi-finals in the women’s doubles. Nadal said that he was feeling good about his progress following his latest injury layoff. Nadal called it a “positive week” in every way and said his body held up well. “I was able to play four matches, a couple of tough matches,” Nadal said. “So very positive, winning three matches, playing four matches at the high level of tennis. I enjoyed a lot playing at home. I leave here with