Artyom Levshunov, who was selected by Chicago with the No. 2 pick in the 2024 NHL Draft, made his NHL debut. The 19-year-old defenseman had three shots on goal in 20:55 of ice time.

“Step by step. Yeah, I was getting more confident, for sure,” Levshunov said. “Unfortunately, we lost, but yeah, I think we played hard.”

Necas appeared to score at 7:31 of the first period from the right post off a feed from MacKinnon, but the Blackhawks successfully challenged the play for offsides.

“Right when Marty scored, he thought it was offside. So, we’re just kind of like, ‘Yeah, I don’t know if it’s going to count,’” MacKinnon said. “I actually thought about that before the game, that that was going to happen, that they’re going to call it back when everyone came on. So, it came true.”

Said Colorado defenseman Erik Johnson: “The first one was more fun, but nice to be able to do it twice, and happy for Nate. He puts a lot of work into it, and sure he’s happy to have it in the rearview mirror, and now he can just focus on winning hockey games and get all that behind him.”

Lehkonen gave the Avalanche the 1-0 lead in the opening minute of the third period when he redirected Devon Toews’ shot from the blue line. MacKinnon had the secondary assist.

“Obviously, our team got a little boost from that, because we answered with a couple goals following that,” Bednar said. “But it was good to come out and finally put one in, because we had some really good chances too, even though they were a little fewer and farther between.”

Necas extended it to 2-0 at 3:27 with a wrist shot from the left hash marks over Knight’s glove.

Kiviranta scored into an empty net at 19:06 for the 3-0 final.

“If you can say that a loss is encouraging, I guess yeah, it was,” Chicago coach Anders Sorensen said. “I thought we did a lot of good things, and I thought both goalies were good. Ours was good too but came up a little short, unfortunately.”

NOTES: Selected by the Avalanche with the No. 1 pick in the 2013 NHL Draft, MacKinnon is the first player from his draft class to hit the 1,000-point mark and the 17th first overall pick to do so. … MacKinnon became the seventh player to record multiple home point streaks of at least 20 games, joining Wayne Gretzky (eight), Mike Bossy (two), Guy Lafleur (two), Mario Lemieux (two), Connor McDavid (two) and Bobby Orr (two). … Necas set a new NHL career high with 72 points (22 goals, 50 assists) in 65 games. … Blackhawks forward Jason Dickinson returned after missing 11 games with a high ankle sprain. He finished minus-2 in 17:16 of ice time. … Chicago defenseman Alec Martinez left the game at 9:17 of the first period with an undisclosed injury. He’s expected to be out day to day.