EDMONTON — The Col­orado Avalanche and Edmon­ton Oil­ers have been two of the best teams in the West­ern Con­fer­ence for years. They’ve been two of the best teams in the league since mid-Novem­ber after a bit of a wonky start both.

They hadn’t played each before Sat­ur­day night. They deliv­ered an instant clas­sic, one of the best non-play­off games in recent Avs his­to­ry, with Art­turi Lehkonen’s last-sec­ond buzzer-beat­er in over­time the dif­fer­ence in a 3–2 win.

“Real­ly fun. I mean, a lot of games, you’re just try­ing to win games to move up in the stand­ings,” Avs star Nathan MacK­in­non said. “That game means a lit­tle more, I think. It’s a huge chal­lenge and we haven’t seen them all year.

“You’re won­der­ing how good they are and … they’re real­ly good, it turns out.”

The Avalanche are one of the best teams in the NHL and expect to win the Stan­ley Cup. There has been a few times this sea­son when an observ­er can tell by the way Avs play­ers and coach Jared Bed­nar speak about an oppo­nent, either before but espe­cial­ly after they’ve played them, that there’s an extra lev­el of respect behind those words.

Col­orado knew Edmon­ton was a tal­ent­ed team with great play­ers. The two clubs met in the 2022 West­ern Con­fer­ence Final. These two teams were among the top pre­sea­son favorites, but the Avs lost five of sev­en, includ­ing a few in ugly fash­ion in the first month while the Oil­ers start­ed 2–9‑1.

Both of these clubs are sig­nif­i­cant­ly bet­ter now. They’ve got­ten rel­a­tive­ly healthy. Col­orado trad­ed for four new play­ers before the trade dead­line, while Edmon­ton added three.

This was the type of game that showed why all of the top teams in the West tried to add to their already strong teams. This was a dif­fer­ent lev­el of hock­ey, even from a few weeks ago.

“Two top teams going at it,” MacK­in­non said. “I thought that was one of our best games of the sea­son, from the start all the way to the end. I thought we real­ly took over the sec­ond and it was pret­ty even in the third, but I felt like we deserved that one.”

The first peri­od was played at a furi­ous pace, about as close to what it’s like in the Stan­ley Cup Play­offs as a reg­u­lar-sea­son tilt can get. The fol­low­ing two and the over­time weren’t far off from it.

These are two of the best offen­sive teams in the NHL, with star pow­er galore, but it was some of the defen­sive plays that were made by play­ers up and down both line­ups that made this game spe­cial. There was so lit­tle room to make the typ­i­cal fan­cy plays, but guys on both sides dug in and found ways to cre­ate chances even with both sides try­ing to suf­fo­cate the other.

MacK­in­non and Con­nor McDavid had some moments. MacK­in­non hit a post, and cre­at­ed the game-win­ning goal with a ter­rif­ic play in the final sec­onds of over­time. He called it a lucky play. The replay showed how great it was.

Anoth­er look at the insane pass by MacK­in­non with 1 sec­ond left. 

He kicks the loose puck with his back skate up to his stick than fires a no look back­hand to Lehko­nen in stride 

#GoAvs­Go

pic.twitter.com/QyGD9khHJD

— Drew Liv­ing­stone (@ProducerDrew_) March 17, 2024

McDavid was ter­ri­fy­ing near­ly every time he was on the ice. Near­ly every time an Avs defense­man was able to knock the puck away from him, or pre­vent him from touch­ing it felt like a big moment.

Nei­ther super­star fac­tored into the scor­ing for 64 min­utes and 59 sec­onds, and yet it was still a show­case game for how impact­ful and notice­able they are, even with oth­er world-class play­ers on the same ice sheet. There were too many high-end skill plays to count, when even just get­ting the puck out of dan­ger at times required one.

Corey Per­ry col­lect­ed his 900th point with­out a stick in his hand, kick­ing the puck to a team­mate. Sean Walk­er scored two goals and near­ly had a third. Lehko­nen made mul­ti­ple “wow” pass­es, includ­ing one to set up Walker.

Casey Mid­del­stadt looked very com­fort­able, mak­ing plays both with the puck and without.

“What a trade,” MacK­in­non said of Walker’s involve­ment so far. “He’s been rock sol­id. All four guys have come in and made a huge dif­fer­ence. (Mid­del­stadt) with the huge pass to (Walk­er), (Yakov Trenin) and (Bran­don Duhaime) have been awe­some depth guys. We’re real­ly excit­ed about everybody.”

Both goal­tenders were great. Depth play­ers on both sides made key impacts.

And we get to see these two teams slug it out at least two more times this sea­son. It shouldn’t be a sur­prise to any­one if one or both of these teams is still play­ing when the West­ern Con­fer­ence Final begins.

“I thought it was a great hock­ey game,” Avs coach Jared Bed­nar said. “I don’t know what else you could ask for from a hock­ey game then watch­ing that one tonight.”

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