LOS ANGELES — Cale Makar scored the tiebreaking goal, Scott Wedgewood made 24 saves and the top-seeded Colorado Avalanche moved to the brink of the second round of the Stanley Cup playoffs with a 4-2 victory over the Los Angeles Kings on Thursday night.Gabriel Landeskog and Artturi Lehkonen scored on fortunate deflections for the Presidents’ Trophy-winning Avalanche, who went up 3-0 in the series with another narrow win over the persistent Kings.With Wedgewood backstopping the defense in his first playoff series, Colorado has allowed just four goals in three games by defense-minded Los Angeles, which has held superstar Nathan MacKinnon without a goal so far.“It’s been tough sledding to create offense, but we have different guys stepping up on different nights and scoring in different situations,” Colorado coach Jared Bednar said. “That’s been able to make the difference.”Trevor Moore and Adrian Kempe scored and Anton Forsberg stopped 19 shots, but the Kings are a loss away from being eliminated in the first round for the fifth consecutive season. Game 4 is Sunday in Los Angeles. A loss would end the 20-year career of Kings captain Anze Kopitar, who is retiring after the season.Los Angeles scored two goals for the first time in the series, but couldn’t find a tying goal after Kempe scored on a power play with 4:03 to play. Instead, Brock Nelson scored into LA’s empty net with 2:18 left.“We’ve just got to continue to find ways to break them down,” Makar said. “I feel like tonight, we got a lot of chances and capitalized on a few. Still, I feel like there’s areas for improvement, for sure.”Los Angeles hasn’t won a playoff round in six previous tries since raising the Stanley Cup in 2014, and this loss was the Kings’ seventh straight postseason defeat dating to last spring.After grinding out a pair of 2-1 victories in Denver, the Avalanche again took care of business in LA with fundamentally sound hockey — …
