DALLAS — Miles Wood screamed for the puck, and delivered the game-winner in overtime for the Colorado Avalanche once he got it.
Wood scored on a hard-charging backhander 11:03 into OT after getting the puck from Andrew Cogliano, and the Avalanche, after trailing by three goals in the first period, beat the top-seeded Dallas Stars 4-3 in the opener of their second-round Western Conference series.
“Instead of just turning and firing it … (Cogliano) gets his eyes up and Wood was fresh and went slashing through their D,” Colorado coach Jared Bednar said. “When Woody get’s going like that, he’s hard to stop. He’s fast and he’s powerful, and he just took it to the house.”
Staying ahead of defenseman Miro Heiskanen, Wood got the puck around Jake Oettinger to wrap up only the Avalanche’s third three-goal comeback to win a playoff game in their history – and first since 1997.
“There’s a scrum in the corner there. … I was just screaming ‘Chip, chip, chip.’ He made a great play, and from there on out, I just used my speed,” said Wood, still breathing heavily from the game-winning play. “I definitely kicked it into high gear there.”
Cale Makar had a goal and two assists for Colorado, while Valerie Nichushkin had a goal and an assist. Nathan MacKinnon had the tying goal only 39 seconds into the third period when left open just to the left of the net, and Mikko Rantanen, who had two assists, had a shot off the post midway through the third period.
“It would have been easy to kind of fold after that first period,” MacKinnon said. “But we felt like we were playing better than what the score showed. We wanted to see it through”
Alexander Georgiev had 19 saves while winning his fifth consecutive start in goal for the Avs. But Dallas, after nine shots on net in the first period, had only seven combined the rest of regulation, and six in overtime when he denied Tyler Seguin twice in less than a minute and knocked down a couple of long high shots by Thomas Harley.
“He’s been playing great for us. We’re all so pumped for him,” Wood said of the goalie. “He let in three there in the first quickly, but he was solid from there on out.”
Stars goalie Oettinger stopped 22 shots, ending his six-game streak of allowing two goals or less.
Dallas led 3-0 in the first period against the 2022 Stanley Cup champion, only two nights after wrapping up a seven-game series against Vegas, last year’s champ, in which both teams finished with…