The Aftermath: Avalanche Earn Point, Lose in OT to Utah

The Avalanche’s perfect road record ended on Tuesday, but their season-opening point streak continued.

Colorado fell 4-3 in overtime to the Utah Mammoth at Delta Center, falling to 5-0-2 through seven games. The Avs trailed by a goal late in regulation and tied it. But in OT, a bad turnover and a careless backcheck from Nathan MacKinnon gave possession to Utah after Colorado won the faceoff.

The rest was history. Clayton Keller found Dylan Guenther as he was crashing the crease, and the puck got past Scott Wedgewood to give Utah the second point.

The Avs got the scoring started thanks to a tally from Cale Makar. The play started with a solid forecheck from Zakhar Bardakov, using his physicality behind the net to help get the puck back in Colorado’s possession.

Bardakov got the secondary assist on the play for his first career NHL point. In the second period, the Mammoth began to gain momentum. They dominated play, winning most puck battles and getting a lot of shots through to Wedgewood.

Following two goals getting waved off (one for each team), Utah’s Nick Schmaltz scored on the power play to tie the game. And just over three minutes later, Lawson Crouse gave Utah the lead.

The score remained the same until the third period. Following a failed Avs PP, Jack Drury scored his first of the season to knot things up at 2-2. But the Mammoth responded off a tally from Mikhail Sergachev.

They carried that lead into the final minutes of the third. And before the Avs even needed to pull their goalie, Martin Necas wired the game-tying goal past Karel Vejmelka from the wing using his quick release.

What Worked

Necas Catches Everyone By Surprise

It’s unfortunate the Avs couldn’t get a second point to get the full reward for this goal. But, Martin Necas, are you kidding me?

What a spectacular release that was. He had inches of space between Vejmelka’s shoulder and the crossbar and managed to squeak the puck in perfectly.

MARTIN NECAS 🤯

That was a ridiculous shot

📺: @espn ➡️ https://t.co/m0LyTCHYnH pic.twitter.com/YTLOkl4NVr

— NHL (@NHL) October 22, 2025

What Didn’t

MacKinnon’s Giveaway

The Avs started OT with Brock Nelson taking the face off. The centerman won it back to give the Avs possession and left the ice to bring Necas on.

With Makar, Necas, MacKinnon, and possession of the puck, it felt like a perfect opportunity for the Avs to create offense. Instead? MacKinnon coughed up the puck, didn’t give it his all on the back check, and the Guenther goal ended the game at 33 seconds.

Landeskog Goal Called Back

There’s something really stark about having a Gabe Landeskog goal get called back on a play eerily similar to Game 7 in San Jose in 2019. To have that happen to what would’ve been his first regular-season goal in three and a half years makes it some kind of bad joke.

But aside from that, I don’t entirely understand why it was overturned. The explanation doesn’t help.

They felt Nichushkin's "actions" caused Dylan Guenther to take the puck backwards into his own zone, therefore it's offside?

That seems like a really interesting way to interpret the rule to me…

— Jesse Montano (@jessemontano_) October 22, 2025

In the end, the officials felt that Valeri Nichushkin made stick-on-stick contact with the Mammoth player. But I’m not sure if that was conclusive enough to overturn it.

That moment definitely shifted the momentum. And now we’ll have to wait a little bit longer for a Landeskog goal.