Avalanche 5–2 Penguins: Lehkonen erased the early deficit before MacKinnon took over

Result — 16 October 2026 in Denver, early 17 October in Africa/Lusaka: the Colorado Avalanche beat the Pittsburgh Penguins 5–2 at Ball Arena after falling 2–0 behind in the first period. Artturi Lehkonen scored the two goals that brought Colorado level, Gabriel Landeskog put it ahead, and Nathan MacKinnon finished with a goal and three assists. The official NHL scoring log records a comeback whose timing says more than the final three-goal margin alone.

Illustrative hockey-stick-and-puck photograph by Santeri Viinamäki, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. It does not depict this match, either team or any player. The image is used unmodified.

How a two-goal lead vanished

Pittsburgh had a genuine opening rather than a lead created by a single strange bounce. Evgeni Malkin scored at 8:28 of the first period, and Bryan Rust made it 2–0 just 29 seconds later. For a visiting side, two quick even-strength goals offered an opportunity to make Colorado chase the game. That sequence also matters to the interpretation: it would be inaccurate to describe this as an Avalanche win built on uninterrupted control from the opening faceoff.

Lehkonen changed the shape of the contest before the first break. His goal at 11:01 cut the deficit to one, with MacKinnon and Martin Necas assisting. The reply prevented Pittsburgh from carrying a clean 2–0 lead into the room. Colorado then needed only 25 seconds of the second period for Lehkonen to score again, also assisted by MacKinnon and Necas. Gabriel Landeskog's goal at 4:24 of that period put the Avalanche in front 3–2. The precise swing was therefore not a vague late rally: the equalizer and go-ahead goal came inside the first five minutes after intermission.

MacKinnon's influence was broader than the last goal

T.J. Hughes extended the lead to 4–2 at 14:57 of the second period, with MacKinnon and Cale Makar credited with assists. MacKinnon then scored a power-play goal at 15:06 of the third, from Makar and Necas, to complete the 5–2 scoreline. The NHL's three-star summary lists MacKinnon first with four points: one goal and three assists. Lehkonen was second after his two-goal response, and Hughes was third. MacKinnon's influence was not confined to the final flourish; he supplied assists on both goals that erased the deficit and on the goal that established a two-goal cushion.

That distribution is important when assessing why Colorado won. Lehkonen did the urgent repair work, Landeskog scored the go-ahead goal, and the MacKinnon–Necas connection kept appearing in the scoring chain. Six of the seven goals in the game came at even strength; only MacKinnon's last was on the power play. It would overstate the evidence to claim one special-teams decision settled the comeback. The listed scoring sequence instead shows Colorado converting successive chances across several shifts and contributors.

What the numbers allow, and what they do not

The official NHL boxscore gives Colorado 32 shots on goal and Pittsburgh 31. Mackenzie Blackwood stopped 29 of 31 for the win; Arturs Silovs stopped 27 of 32 in the loss. Those totals support a narrower conclusion than the score might suggest: the Avalanche were more productive with a near-even shot count. They do not, by themselves, establish which side had better chances, controlled every zone entry, or deserved a different result. Shot quality, traffic and defensive mistakes would require more detailed evidence than the totals provide.

Pittsburgh's strongest counterpoint is its first-period burst. Malkin and Rust put the Penguins two up, and the visitors still generated 31 shots. A 5–2 defeat should not erase those stretches. Yet the lead was fragile once Lehkonen answered, and Colorado made the start of the second period decisive. The next question for Pittsburgh is less about the raw shot tally than how quickly a two-goal advantage became a deficit; for Colorado, the useful lesson is that its response began before the interval, not only after it. The match page carries the verified final score, while the ice-hockey newsroom has related coverage.