Golden Knights fall into tie for 1st place with Avalanche

DENVER — For the past 31 days, the Golden Knights have enjoyed their perch atop the West Division standings.

They now have company.

The Knights allowed four goals in the second period and suffered their worst loss of the season in a 5-1 setback to the Colorado Avalanche on Thursday at Ball Arena.

“We knew they were going to be good and motivated,” coach Pete DeBoer said. “We got a good, old-fashioned (beating).”

The Knights (22-8-1, 45 points) had been alone in first place since Feb. 22, but are even in points with Colorado (21-8-3, 45 points) entering the finale of the two-game series Saturday. The Knights have a game in hand on the Avalanche, who extended their points streak to nine games.

Max Pacioretty returned after a two-game absence and scored in the opening minute of the first period, but the Knights’ offense was held in check the remainder of the game.

Colorado limited the Knights to a season-low 19 shots on goal.

“When we make life easy on them, they’re able to get pucks and skate with them. They’re up and out of their zone and making plays,” Pacioretty said. “It just seemed like they were getting out of their end way too easy in that middle frame. We’ve got to make life a lot harder on their defensemen.”

Gabriel Landeskog, Cale Makar and J.T. Compher each finished with a goal and an assist for Colorado. Avalanche center Pierre-Edouard Bellemare added a goal in the third period against his former club.

The Knights lost their discipline in the second and took three penalties while matching their season high for goals allowed in a period.

Joonas Donskoi swatted in a bouncing puck for a power-play goal at 4:04 before Compher beat Marc-Andre Fleury with a backhand from a sharp angle to put the Avalanche ahead 2-1 about five minutes later.

Makar got behind defenseman Nick Holden for his third goal, and Landeskog cleaned up a rebound at 15:41 for a 4-1 advantage.

The Knights mustered five shots on goal in the second, one off their season low for a period, and went a stretch of 11:21 without a shot at Colorado goalie Philipp Grubauer.

Nicolas Roy had a goal disallowed in the third period when the Avalanche successfully challenged that the play was offside.

“You take three penalties in the first 10 minutes of the second period you’re not coming out with a lot of momentum,” captain Mark Stone said. “Even if we did kill the majority of the penalties, they just kept throwing it down our throats, and we just couldn’t match it. Then the lines get juggled, guys are sitting at the end of the bench, you get out of that rhythm. I think that was a really important part of the game.”

The Avalanche played their first home game since Monday’s mass shooting at a supermarket in Boulder, Colorado, and wore special jerseys during warmups to honor the 10 people who were killed.

The Knights broke through on the opening shift when Pacioretty collected a pass from Stone and skated through the middle of the ice. He appeared to lose possession, but was able to dig the puck out of his skates and backhand in his team-leading 17th goal.

That sparked a turbo-charged first period that belonged to Colorado, which had two breakaways in the opening seven minutes.

“Even after the first period it was a little bit of a mirage where we were at,” DeBoer said. “No one’s happy with how the night went, and (Saturday is) going to be all about our response.”

Contact David Schoen at dschoen@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5203. Follow @DavidSchoenLVRJ on Twitter.