Nathan MacKinnon and Never-Say-Die Avs Storm Back in Toronto

Mack scores another game winner as Colorado erases 1st-period deficit.

Just like the Colorado Avalanche, the JV high school hockey team I coach fell behind early on Sunday morning. And just like the Avs, we erased that deficit to win.

Colorado found themselves in a 3-0 hole after 20 minutes of play in front of a national audience on Saturday in Toronto as Hockey Night in Canada carried the contest from coast to coast to our neighbors to the north. By the end of the night, though, the Avs had ripped off five straight goals and taken the inter-conference battle by a pair, 5-3.

On Sunday morning, my team fell behind 2-0 in the opening period, led 4-3 after two and finished the game with an 8-3 win. None of my players care for the Avalanche like I do, so it wasn’t like they were inspired by the play of a Colorado team playing without the game’s elite power forward in Val Nichushkin. They didn’t see the heroic effort on the game-winning goal from Nathan MacKinnon or even the boneheaded play by Maple Leaf TJ Brodie that allowed Jonathan Drouin to score an easy power-play goal.

But I watched. And what last night (and many of the Avs’ recent games for that matter) taught me is that good teams are never out of games.