Avalanche defeat Flyers for 2nd straight road win

PHILADELPHIA -- Mackenzie Blackwood made 23 saves, including a penalty shot in the third period, for the Colorado Avalanche in a 3-2 win against the Philadelphia Flyers at Xfinity Mobile Arena on Sunday.

Blackwood, who made his second start in as many days, kept his team in front at 4:54 of the third with a pad save against Trevor Zegras, who was awarded a penalty shot after being impeded by Nathan MacKinnon on a breakaway.

He stopped 24 shots in a 3-2 overtime win at the New York Rangers on Saturday with Scott Wedgewood unavailable since Dec. 2 because of a back injury. It was the 12th time in eight NHL seasons Blackwood has played on back-to-back days.

"I knew after the first one last night," Blackwood said. "I just figured, try and rest up as much as I could, get myself ready to go today. Maybe drink an extra coffee."

Brent Burns, Brock Nelson and Valeri Nichushkin scored for the Avalanche (21-2-6) in their latest road victory after having a 17-game point streak (14-0-3) end in a 6-3 loss at the New York Islanders on Thursday.

"I kind of felt like yesterday afternoon [Blackwood could start again], little bit of a light workload, and coming into tonight, if we played the right way, it would hopefully be a light workload as well," Colorado coach Jared Bednar said. "Because we were really committed on the defensive side of it yesterday, I just hoped that he could give us one more performance before we get a day off. It's kind of the best option that we had, so we went with it."

Sean Couturier and Travis Konecny scored for the Flyers (15-9-3), who are 1-2-0 thus far on a six-game homestand. Samuel Ersson made 25 saves.

"I thought we had chances to win this game," said Couturier, who is Philadelphia’s captain. "Just felt that at times maybe we gave them a little too much respect and we watched them a little bit. Overall we competed hard; we were right there until the end."

Couturier, playing his 900th NHL game on his 33rd birthday, gave the Flyers a 1-0 lead at 2:09 of the first period on a redirection of Noah Juulsen’s shot.

Burns tied it 1-1 at 8:28 with a shot from the right face-off circle.

Nelson gave the Avalanche a 2-1 lead with a power-play goal at 19:08, sliding the puck under Ersson during a scramble at the front of the net. It was Nelson’s 10th goal of the season and fourth in five games.

It was also Colorado’s first on the power play in four games; it had been 0-for-6 in its previous three.

"Really good first power play," Bednar said. "I think we had four scoring chances on it, finally put in a rebound. We took some shots with traffic, we moved it around. ... Good attack mentality, puck was moving quick, good net presence. Kind of put all three of those together for the full two minutes, and you get rewarded."

Nichushkin made it 3-1 at 1:47 of the second period with a shot from the right face-off dot that beat Ersson over his blocker.

Konecny cut it to 3-2 at 5:58 when he scored between Blackwood's pads on a breakaway.

The Flyers outshot the Avalanche 13-3 in the third, including Zegras' penalty shot attempt.

"That's a great challenge," Blackwood said of facing Zegras. "He's a hell of a penalty shooter; that guy's skills are next-level. But kind of in the back of my mind, I was thinking, just try to be very patient and make him make all the moves, and don't chase him around, trying to kind of wait him out."

NOTES: The Avalanche are 4-0-2 in the second game of back-to-backs this season. ... MacKinnon's assist on Nelson's goal was his 25th of the season in his 29th game. It's the eighth time he's had at least 25 assists in fewer than 30 games, surpassing Joe Sakic for the most in Avalanche/Quebec Nordiques history. ... Burns played his 1,526th game, tying Ryan Suter for 19th all-time in the NHL and seventh all-time among defensemen. His goal was his 265th, passing Nicklas Lidstrom for ninth all-time among NHL defensemen. … Couturier is the fourth player with 900 games for the Flyers, joining Bobby Clarke (1,144), Claude Giroux (1,000) and Bill Barber (903). ... Konecny has six points (two goals, four assists) during a four-game point streak; he's also one point from 500 in the NHL.