WASHINGTON — That won’t rank highly among the prettiest of the 46 victories to date for the Colorado Avalanche, but it sure felt significant.

Colorado shook off a sluggish start, less than ideal ice conditions and a late goal from the greatest shooter of all time to claim a 3-2 overtime win Sunday afternoon against the Washington Capitals at Capital One Arena. Brock Nelson scored a tap-in at the left post after a beautiful sequence from Martin Necas to push the Avs five points in front of the Dallas Stars for first place in the Central Division with 13 games to play.

“Because of the standings and what we are trying to accomplish, they are all big,” Avs coach Jared Bednar said. “It’s not a bad place to be. I don’t mind the pressure that’s on our team to try and keep winning in the regular season. It should fine tune you and get you ready for the playoffs.

“You’re going to have to win games when you’re feeling good and cooking with gas, and you’re going to have to win games when you’re not at your best. You have to stick with it and be mentally tough. … It wasn’t a great game as a whole, but you’ve got to find a way on some of those we did that.”

Colorado scored on its first two shots on goal of the third period to take the lead. Necas intercepted a pass by goalie Logan Thompson behind the Washington net and fed Gabe Landeskog for one of the easier goals of his career just 1:05 into the final period.

It was Landeskog’s 10th goal of the season. The Avs captain returned to the lineup Sunday after missing the past seven games with a lower-body injury.

Nicolas Roy caused rookie defenseman Cole Hutson to cough up the puck in front of Thompson, then collected it and ripped one past the goalie at 6:03 to push the Avs in front. That is Roy’s third goal in nine games since the joining the Avalanche ahead of the trade deadline. He had five goals in 59 games for the Toronto Maple Leafs before the trade.

Alex Ovechkin had an NHL-record 330 career power-play goals coming into this game. No. 331 got the Capitals back even at 2-2 with 5:43 left in the third. Landeskog went to the penalty box, and 20 seconds later Ovechkin uncorked a vintage one-timer from the left circle.

It was Ovechkin’s 923rd career regular-season goal, and No. 1,000 including the playoffs.

That was also Colorado’s fifth penalty of the game. The penalty kill had been perfect to that point, and had only allowed three shots on goal across the previous eight PK opportunities dating back to the Dallas game Wednesday night before Ovechkin’s rocket.

The Avs are now 6-10 in games that go past regulation. Given their advantage in regulation wins over Dallas (40-33), they are likely to win a tiebreaker so the division lead is functionally six points.

That’s because Necas held onto the puck for several seconds in the offensive zone before finding Nelson for his 32nd goal of the season.

“That’s kind of the plan with Marty in a 3-on-3 situation. Just get him the puck and try to get open,” Nelson said. “He’s so good at creating space for himself and everybody else with how shifty he is, how quick he is and his possession play.

“Just an unbelievable play by him.”

Justin Sourdif had the lone goal of the opening period to put the Capitals in front. Colorado had the puck in the Washington zone, but a quick transition play and some miscommunication by the visitors cost them.

Both Cale Makar and Valeri Nichushkin converged on Connor McMichael near the blue line, but he flipped the puck out and into the path of Sourdif. He corralled it after three bounces and was neither Nathan MacKinnon nor Brett Kulak were able to track him down before the Capitals rookie fired one past Mackenzie Blackwood at 11:53 of the first.

It was an unseasonably warm day in the nation’s capital, and the arena has a significant amount of construction happening in and around it. That may have contributed to some issues with the ice, particularly in the first period. Players from both teams had to deal with it, but several Avalanche players fell or mishandled the puck in obvious situations where they normally would not.

Josh Manson fell while carrying the puck in the neutral zone, which led to a 3-on-1 for the home side. Devon Toews crashed hard into the boards after beating Ovechkin to a loose puck. It was a choppy period overall, but Soudrif made a great play to corral a bouncing puck and scored.

Colorado dominated the puck in the middle period, but some combination of the Avs’ struggles handling the puck or Washington recovering from turnovers well kept it from looking like a vintage 20 minutes. The Avs only had 20 shot attempts in the period and six scoring chances, according to Natural Stat Trick, about a third less than they might typically produce in a one-way traffic kind of period.

“It was a little bit choppier,” Nelson said. “The intention was the same as the last couple games, but it just didn’t look like it. Not all of them are going to be like that, so we had to find a way to adapt and maybe just muck it up a little bit more. I thought we did that as the game went on, and we started to control it a little bit more.”

____

©2026 MediaNews Group, Inc. Visit at denverpost.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.