Nathan MacKinnon, Cale Makar make their feelings known after Avs' 8-2 blowout loss to Bolts 

By ARJUN B

Modified Nov 26, 2024 04:12 GMT

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The Colorado Avalanche suffered a blowout 8-2 loss against the Tampa Bay Lightning on Monday night at Amalie Arena. The defeat dropped the Avs' record to 12-10-0 on the season after winning three straight road games.

After the game, Nathan MacKinnon expressed his disappointment:

"I thought we had a great road trip, it sucks to end it like this. Everything went in and we couldn't do anything to stop it."

Defenseman Cale Makar echoed MacKinnon's sentiments:

“Yeah, just the minds weren't in it. Felt like at some points our body wanted to do the right thing and just the execution was bad. We were just slower than them to every puck and yeah that was kind of the way the night went.

"Obviously, at the end of the day you jump the lines again and obviously you've been out late the last second so it is what it is…I think the guys will understand what we did wrong and um we'll move on," he added.

Jake Guentzel (two), Luke Glendening, Nikita Kucherov, Anthoney Cirelli, Michael Eyssimont, Nick Perbix and Brayden Point scored for the Lightning. Ivan Ivan scored both goals for the Avalanche in the loss.

Andrei Vasilevskiy stopped 23 shots for Tampa while Colorado's Alexandar Georgiev made 14 saves on 17 shots before being replaced by Justus Annunen. Annunen stopped 11 shots on 16 in relief.

Cale Makar on finishing the road trip with 8-2 loss to Bolts

Despite the lopsided defeat, the Avs went 3-1 on their road trip and Makar said there were still positives to take away.

"Obviously, you never want to finish the road trip off like this, it's never fun going home on a loss," Makar said. "But at the same time, over the course of a road trip, you have to take the positives from that and for us I think there was a lot to learn from tonight."

He also noted that there was a disconnect between their physical and mental focus, which sometimes happens. Makar emphasized the need to recognize this issue early on and keep their approach simple to maintain competitiveness in games like this.

The Avalanche will look to bounce back in their next game against the Vegas Golden Knights on Wednesday at Ball Arena.