Yakov Trenin had a great game against his for­mer team. Nathan MacK­in­non has great games against everyone.

Toss in a great relief effort from back­up goal­tender Jus­tus Annunen, and the Col­orado Avalanche col­lect­ed anoth­er wild come­back vic­to­ry Sat­ur­day after­noon. The 7–4 win against the Nashville Preda­tors also clinched a play­off berth for the Avalanche. It’s the sev­enth straight post­sea­son berth for the Avs.

“That’s the goal, right? Get in the play­offs and give your­selves a chance,” Avs coach Jared Bed­nar said. “It just shows the ded­i­ca­tion and hard work that all the guys are putting into every sea­son and try­ing to keep improv­ing from the sea­son before. Yep, it feels good.”

MacK­in­non had two goals and two assists to start a new home point scor­ing streak, and at least tem­porar­i­ly reclaim the NHL scor­ing lead from Tam­pa Bay’s Niki­ta Kucherov and Edmonton’s Con­nor McDavid. Trenin had his best game since arriv­ing from Nashville in a trade before the dead­line, includ­ing the game-win­ning goal against his old mates.

The Preda­tors scored four times on 13 shots against Avs starter Alexan­dar Georgiev. Nashville’s fourth goal came 57 sec­onds into the sec­ond peri­od and gave the Preda­tors a 4–2 lead.

Georgiev was assessed an unsports­man­like penal­ty and pulled from the game after the goal. Annunen stopped all 13 shots he faced in the sec­ond as the Avalanche mount­ed its come­back, and then nine more in the final 20 min­utes to seal the victory.

“I still feel like we could have done a cou­ple more things to be bet­ter in front of (Georgiev), but (Annunen) came in and he was awe­some,” Cale Makar said. “He was a brick wall for us.”

It start­ed after Nashville defense­man Ryan McDon­agh was assessed a major penal­ty and game mis­con­duct on his for­mer Tam­pa Bay team­mate, Ross Colton. Art­turi Lehko­nen scored on a one-timer that he didn’t get all of dur­ing the ensu­ing five-minute pow­er play to make it 4–3.

Makar scored the Avs’ third pow­er-play goal of the game with 1:35 remain­ing in the sec­ond to lev­el the score. Trenin and Bran­don Duhaime out­mus­cled Fil­ip Fors­berg to win a loose puck bat­tle, and then Trenin snapped one past Kevin Lank­i­nen to give Col­orado the lead and score on his for­mer team­mates with 29 sec­onds remain­ing in the period.

“Today’s game was like a play­off for me,” Trenin said.

MacK­in­non made it a 6–4 lead for the Avs with his 46th goal of the year ear­ly in the third peri­od. The Ball Are­na crowd unleashed its loud­est “M‑V-P” chant of the sea­son afterward.

The phys­i­cal­i­ty in this game was appar­ent from the open­ing min­utes of the first peri­od. These are two of the hottest teams in the league over the past month, and both are chas­ing a play­off posi­tion — Nashville wants to hunt down Win­nipeg for third in the Cen­tral Divi­sion, while Col­orado is try­ing to track down Dal­las for the divi­sion title and poten­tial­ly the No. 1 over­all seed in the West­ern Conference.

There’s a pos­si­bil­i­ty that these clubs could see each oth­er again three weeks from now to start the 2024 Stan­ley Cup Play­offs, and it felt like there was some mes­sage-send­ing at times.

Nashville won each of their first two meet­ings at Bridge­stone Are­na. The Preda­tors took the first one in dra­mat­ic fash­ion — they scored twice in the final minute to tie and win the game. The sec­ond was a 5–1 blowout March 2, and that was the last tru­ly poor out­ing for the Avalanche.

MacK­in­non assist­ed on both of Colorado’s first-peri­od goals. He found Jonathan Drouin at the far post ear­ly in the period.

Casey Mit­tel­stadt, play­ing on the top pow­er play because Valeri Nichushkin missed a sec­ond-straight game with a low­er-body injury, stuffed one in late in the peri­od. MacK­in­non added an emp­ty-net goal with 3:50 left to give him 47 goals and 127 points with eight games left.

MacK­in­non already owns the Den­ver-based record for points in a sea­son. The over­all fran­chise record is 139 points, set by Peter Stast­ny in 1981–82.

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