There have been some rough moments in their own building for Jared McCann and his Kraken teammates when the Colorado Avalanche come to town.

A touch of that receded Tuesday night when McCann scored the 100^th goal of his Kraken career to pull his team even in the second period. But the Kraken couldn’t do enough from there, yielding two goals before that period ended and taking a 3-2 loss to an undermanned Colorado group that’s gotten used to winning games at Climate Pledge Arena.

Joel Kiviranta’s second goal of the night on a deflection past Philipp Grubauer put the Avalanche ahead to stay with just more than five minutes to go in the middle frame. And then, with only eight seconds to play until intermission, Nathan MacKinnon dealt the Kraken a gut punch with a wrist shot past Grubauer to give the visitors a multi-goal lead.

Ryker Evans scored with 3.5 seconds left in regulation, and Grubauer pulled for an extra attacker, but it was far too late to change the outcome.

It marked the seventh time in nine tries that the Avalanche have vanquished the Kraken in their own building, a 2-6-1 mark for the home side that includes dropping two of three at Climate Pledge in their playoff series two springs ago. And it served notice to the Kraken, whose three-game win streak came to an end, that they still have work ahead to parlay this strong 4-3 start to their season into something more lasting.

It was in that opening round playoff series in April 2023 that McCann took a late hit in Game 4 at Climate Pledge from Avalanche star defender Cale Makar after the whistle had gone. He suffered a concussion that knocked him out of the remainder of that series, won by the Kraken in seven games largely because they took three of four contests on the road at Ball Arena.

Makar has been booed whenever he so much as touches a puck in this city ever since, including on Tuesday night right as he slid a pass to MacKinnon in the high slot for his power play goal that made it a 3-1 game. And just as the Kraken found a way to prevail in that opening round without their 40-goal man McCann in the final three contests, they’ll need to do more in coming weeks with top defenseman Vince Dunn now on Long Term Injured Reserve with an undisclosed mid-body injury.

This was the team’s second game without Dunn and they’ve scored just one even strength goal that span. They struggled to generate chances the final two periods of this one against an Avs’ team that had yielded a league-high 4.83 goals per game in their first six contests and opened this one with three rookies — Calum Ritchie, Ivan Ivan and Matt Stienburg – in their lineup.

They certainly started out looking as if they’d manage quite a few more against Colorado netminder Justus Annunen, with Yanni Gourde hitting the post in the opening minute off a Tye Kartye pass and the Kraken buzzing the Colorado net seemingly at will.

The Kraken went on to outshoot Colorado 12-5 in the period but trailed 1-0 after Kiviranta beat Grubauer blocker-side with a shot just inside the post with only 88 seconds remaining that frame. And the offense slowed considerably from there, managing only 15 shots the rest of the game – six of them coming on a power play the final two minutes of regulation with Grubauer pulled to put the Kraken up by two men.

Colorado held a 17-5 shot advantage in the middle period despite McCann scoring his fourth of the season on the backhand midway through after Shane Wright and Jordan Eberle did an outstanding job of maintaining possession of a loose puck.