Pittsburgh Penguins @ Colorado Avalanche 1-3 - 03/04

Gabriel Landeskog scored a goal and added two assists to lead the Colorado Avalanche to a 3-1 win against the Pittsburgh Penguins at Pepsi Center on Wednesday. Semyon Varlamov made 12 of his 28 saves in the third period for the Avalanche (28-25-11), who have won six of their past nine games and are eight points behind the Minnesota Wild for the second wild-card spot in the Western Conference. The Penguins (36-18-9), who had won four games in a row, opened a four-game road trip through the West. Sidney Crosby didn't have a shot on goal. The Penguins, who outshot the Avalanche 13-4 in the third period, pulled within 2-1 at 9:45 on a goal by Evgeni Malkin, who stole the puck from Colorado's John Mitchell and beat Varlamov from the slot. Malkin has six goals and six assists in a six-game point-scoring streak. Landeskog responded with a goal at 14:57 for a 3-1 Avalanche lead. Ryan O'Reilly passed to Landeskog, who moved around defenseman Derrick Pouliot, skated in front and shot the puck by goalie Marc-Andre Fleury's left pad. Fleury, who made 19 saves, went to the bench for a sixth skater with 2:27 remaining. The Avalanche got goals from Jarome Iginla and MacKinnon in the second period to take a 2-0 lead. Iginla opened the scoring 13 seconds into the period with a power-play goal. Landeskog passed to Iginla, who skated into the Penguins zone and took a shot from above the right circle that beat Fleury to the far corner. Iginla reached the 20-goal mark for the 16th time in his NHL career and tied Bobby Clarke for 43rd place on the all-time list with 1,210 points. The goal ended the Avalanche's 0-for-11 slump on power plays covering parts of three games. MacKinnon scored at 14:29. Landeskog passed across to defenseman Jan Hejda, who took a shot from the left circle that MacKinnon tipped in from in front of the net. Avalanche left wing Alex Tanguay was honored in a pregame ceremony before playing in his 1,000th NHL game.

Pens Quotes

Sidney Crosby: "We didn't make things as difficult as we should, but when we did get some good chances (Varlamov) made some key saves. We would have liked to put more pressure on him, but he did make some good saves when he needed to. Getting through the neutral zone, getting out of our zone, it just wasn't clean, so it was tough to enter with a lot of speed. You're either making bad passes or they're intercepting them. It was hard to get any real flow."
Mike Johnston: "We needed someone to get us going. We had some jump in the third period, but (Malkin) took it to another level on a couple of those shifts. The one he scored on, the one he almost scored on where he came in all alone, his skating lately has been really good, he protects the puck well in the offensive zone. He looked like he was going to try to take charge of that third period."