There were moments Sun­day after­noon that could have con­found­ed the Col­orado Avalanche, a club des­per­ate to dig out of a recent slump.

Even­tu­al­ly, the Avs’ top play­ers cre­at­ed one sequence of bril­liance and it was enough for a much-need­ed win. Devon Toews scored with 6:43 remain­ing on a shot set up by Nathan MacKinnon’s will and Jonathan Drouin’s skill, and the Avs pre­vailed with a 4–3 vic­to­ry against the Ari­zona Coyotes.

“It’s nev­er going to as smooth as you plan,” Avs coach Jared Bed­nar. “In order to be suc­cess­ful, you have to be men­tal­ly tough. There was nev­er a sense that I had on the bench that we were frag­ment­ing and going on our own way. That we weren’t stick­ing to the plan and trust­ing the process.”

This con­test was filled with delays, penal­ties and coach’s chal­lenges. The Avs con­trolled play for long stretch­es, but couldn’t sep­a­rate from the pesky Coy­otes. Col­orado won for just the sec­ond time in sev­en tries since the All-Star break, and this was an impor­tant one after a dis­ap­point­ing road trip.

MacK­in­non went behind the Coy­otes’ net and was met by defense­man J.J. Moser, but the Avs super­star went through the attempt­ed check and held onto the puck. He sent it into the slot for Drouin, whose deft one-touch play set up Toews for a blast from the left point.

“(This) was a much bet­ter effort, prob­a­bly bet­ter than any game we played on the road trip,” Toews said. “We are just try­ing to get back to our game, con­sis­tent­ly play­ing our game in our structure.”

There were sig­nif­i­cant bright spots. Bo Byram had his third-straight mul­ti-point game. Jack John­son had a goal and an assist. MacK­in­non had a typ­i­cal­ly impact­ful, dom­i­nant effort and fin­ished with two points.

There were also some con­cerns. The Avs have been plagued by momen­tary laps­es after long stretch­es of car­ry­ing the play, and that hap­pened again Sun­day. Col­orado also took too many penal­ties, got pulled out of align­ment on the penal­ty kill for a goal and did not score despite copi­ous chances with the man advantage.

Even though the Coy­otes had lost eight straight, the Avs were left to hang on in the final min­utes, includ­ing a 4‑on‑6 sit­u­a­tion for the final 81 seconds.

“We’ve had tough games against these guys all year,” John­son said. “That didn’t sur­prise me. We knew it was going to be a tough night and they have some real­ly good offen­sive play­ers. We knew there had to be a big empha­sis on defending.”

The Avs took an ear­ly lead when Miles Wood set up Ross Colton for his 12th goal of the sea­son 4:10 into the first, but Coy­otes defense­man Math­ew Dum­ba scored on the rebound of a Alex Ker­foot shot and Law­son Crouse made it 2–1 with a pow­er-play tally.

The Avalanche had lots of chances to score a pow­er-play goal of its own in the sec­ond peri­od. Col­orado had eight min­utes with the extra man, includ­ing a dou­ble-minor, and racked up 13 shots on net with­out scoring.

The sec­ond peri­od was cer­tain­ly a test of men­tal tough­ness. The Avs dom­i­nat­ed the puck, racked up 21 shots on net and only yield­ed 0.2 expect­ed goals. And yet it was still a 3–3 game after 40 min­utes because the Coy­otes con­vert­ed one of the few chances they had.

John­son had tied the game at 2–2 with a nifty spin and for­ay towards the net from the right point ear­ly in the peri­od. Short­ly Col­orado botched a 3‑on‑2 while short­hand­ed, Ari­zona coun­tered with a 4‑on‑2 just as a penal­ty on MacK­in­non expired and Logan Coo­ley scored from between the circles.

MacK­in­non got the Avs lev­el for a sec­ond time with a goal 21 sec­onds lat­er. Bryam set him up at the right post, but it took MacK­in­non four whacks at the puck before it crossed the goal line. Ari­zona goalie Karel Vejmel­ka tried to pull it back into play, but MacK­in­non helped the offi­cial near­by with a “good goal” sig­nal of his own.

It was MacKinnon’s 33rd goal of the sea­son, and he reached 90 points in his 56th game. That’s the fastest an Avalanche play­er has reached 90 points, and the fastest in fran­chise his­to­ry since Peter Stast­ny had 90 in 56 in 1987–88 for the Que­bec Nordiques.

Each team had a goal tak­en off the board by a coach’s chal­lenge in the third peri­od. Ker­foot was off­sides when got behind the Avs defense, and Ranta­nen was well off­sides before a Drouin goal that came on the first shift after the Coy­otes’ goal was wiped out.

“Both teams were a lit­tle undis­ci­plined. The chal­lenges are what they are,” Toews said. “That slows the game down and can take you out of the ebbs and flows a lit­tle bit more. It’s part of the game. You have to stay in the moment. I think we did a decent job of that.”

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