Avalanche 4, Canadiens 1: Colorado Leaves Montreal Cold

Colorado walked into Montreal and left with a 4-1 win, and the scoreline says plenty. Four goals to one is a clean, businesslike result, the kind that tells you one team understood the assignment and the other spent a long night chasing it.

The Avalanche took care of business on the scoreboard, and that is the only thing the final tells us for certain. Montreal got its one goal, which makes this one sting for the home crowd. A single tally on home ice is not going to get you far when the opposition is stacking goals like that.

We are working from the final score here, so we will not pretend to know which line dominated, who was in net, or which bounce went where. What we can say with confidence is that a three-goal margin makes Colorado the better side on the night, and Montreal never found an answer once it fell behind.

For the Canadiens, this is the kind of loss that forces a hard look in the mirror. For the Avalanche, it is a road result that travels well in the standings conversation. Four goals in Montreal is nothing to sneeze at, and it sends a message to the rest of the conference about who showed up ready.