Avalanche get defenseman Cale Makar back, survive scare with Nathan MacKinnon, and still lose Game 3

LAS VEGAS (AP) — In a roller coaster of a Sunday for the Colorado Avalanche, they welcomed their defensive star back in time for Game 3 of the Western Conference Final against the Vegas Golden Knights, survived a scare with their biggest offensive name before losing another, and squandered a first-period three-goal lead en route to a 5-3 loss.

Vegas scored five unanswered goals to push the Avalanche to the brink of elimination. One more win and Vegas returns to the Stanley Cup Final for the second time in four years, and third time in the franchise's nine-year existence.

It would also mark the 13th straight season the Presidents' Trophy recipient — the team with the most regular-season points — failed to win the Stanley Cup.

Colorado defenseman Cale Makar returned to the ice after missing the first two games with an upper-body injury he suffered in Game 5 of the conference semifinals against the Minnesota Wild.

Leading scorer Nathan MacKinnon fought through an injury sustained in the second period, and forward Valeri Nichushkin was lost with an injury and finished with just 8:34 of playing time.

“You lose Nate and Val ... so you’re running a shorter bench, and you’re just doing the best you can to try and create a chance to win the hockey game,” said Avalanche coach Jared Bednar, who didn't have an update on either forward. “I don’t know, how do you navigate it? You just put your head down (and) keep working. You got three different lines or two different lines, and spot shift in your 10th guy to try and give some guys a break; not ideal circumstances for sure.”

Vegas had taken advantage of Makar's absence, winning the first two games of the series. But with the two-time Norris Trophy winner back in the lineup, all things were seemingly headed in Colorado's direction, as it was the Avalanche who came out swinging with three first-period goals to stun the announced crowd of 18,212.

But, after Vegas tied the game with three straight goals of its own, MacKinnon left late in the second period after taking a blistering slapshot to the side of his left knee. MacKinnon took two shifts after blocking Vegas defenseman Shea Theodore's shot but, clearly in pain, went down to the locker room with 3:36 left in the period.

“It’s tough, he sells out for a shot block, and unfortunately, it’s obviously because of a bad turnover from us,” Makar said about MacKinnon. “And then just giving them those opportunities in the first place, so (that) shouldn’t happen. But obviously an amazing block there.”

MacKinnon, who had an assist in the first period and leads Colorado with 15 points this postseason, was back on the ice in the third period but finished with just 18:02 time on ice. The 2024 Hart Trophy winner was averaging more than 21 minutes of playing time through the team's first 11 games.

“Everyone’s down in the dumps right now,” Bednar said. “That’s in the next 36 hours ... to get our team back to where our focus is in the right place, and seems like a tough hill to climb — especially against a team like Vegas.”

Vegas welcomed back a key figure, as captain Mark Stone returned to the lineup after missing the last five games. Stone exited Game 3 of Vegas’ conference semifinal series with the Anaheim Ducks with a lower-body injury. Stone finished with a goal and an assist in Vegas' win on Sunday.

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This story has been corrected to show it would be the 13th straight season a Presidents’ Trophy recipient failed to win the Stanley Cup instead of 15th.

AP NHL: https://apnews.com/hub/NHL

Vegas Golden Knights right wing Keegan Kolesar, left, gets set to score on Colorado Avalanche goaltender Scott Wedgewood during the second period in Game 3 of the Western Conference finals NHL hockey Stanley Cup playoff series Sunday, May 24, 2026, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)

Vegas Golden Knights right wing Mitch Marner, right, reaches in on Colorado Avalanche defenseman Cale Makar during the first period in Game 3 of the Western Conference finals NHL hockey Stanley Cup playoff series Sunday, May 24, 2026, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)

Colorado Avalanche center Jack Drury celebrates after scoring during the first period in Game 3 of the Western Conference finals NHL hockey Stanley Cup playoff series against the Vegas Golden Knights, Sunday, May 24, 2026, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)

Colorado Avalanche center Nathan MacKinnon lays on the ice after being injured during the second period in Game 3 of the Western Conference finals NHL hockey Stanley Cup playoff series against the Vegas Golden Knights, Sunday, May 24, 2026, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)

Memorial Day is a U.S. holiday that is officially about mourning the nation's fallen service members, but it has come to signal the unofficial start of summer and a long weekend of travel and discounts on anything from mattresses to lawn mowers.

Here is a look at the holiday and how it has evolved:

It falls on the last Monday of May. This year, it is May 25.

It’s a day of reflection and remembrance of those who died while serving in the U.S. military, according to the Congressional Research Service.

The holiday is observed in part by the National Moment of Remembrance, which encourages all Americans to pause at 3 p.m. for a moment of silence.

The holiday's origins can be traced to the American Civil War, which killed more than 600,000 service members, Union and Confederate, between 1861 and 1865.

The first national observance of what was then called Decoration Day occurred May 30, 1868, after an organization of Union veterans called for decorating war graves with flowers that were in bloom.

The practice was already widespread. Waterloo, New York, began a formal observance on May 5, 1866, and was later proclaimed to be the holiday’s birthplace.

Yet Boalsburg, Pennsylvania, traced its first observance to October 1864, according to the Library of Congress. And women in some Confederate states decorated graves before the war’s end.

David Blight, a Yale history professor, points to May 1, 1865, when as many as 10,000 people, many of them Black, held a parade, heard speeches and dedicated the graves of Union dead in Charleston, South Carolina.

A total of 267 Union troops had died at a Confederate prison and were buried in a mass grave. After the war, members of Black churches buried them in individual graves.

“What happened in Charleston does have the right to claim to be first, if that matters,” Blight told The Associated Press in 2011.

As early as 1869, The New York Times wrote that the holiday could become “sacrilegious” and no longer “sacred” if it focused more on pomp, dinners and oratory.

In an 1871 Decoration Day speech at Arlington National Cemetery, abolitionist Frederick Douglass said he feared Americans were forgetting the Civil War’s impetus: enslavement.

“We must never forget that the loyal soldiers who rest beneath this sod flung themselves between the nation and the nation’s destroyers,” Douglass said.

His concerns were well-founded, said Ben Railton, a professor of English and American studies at Fitchburg State University in Massachusetts.

Although roughly 180,000 Black men served in the Union Army, the holiday in many communities would essentially become “white Memorial Day,” especially after the rise of the Jim Crow South, Railton told the AP in 2023.

In the 1880s, then-President Grover Cleveland was said to have spent the holiday going fishing, and “people were appalled,” Matthew Dennis, an emeritus history professor at the University of Oregon, told the AP.

But when the Indianapolis 500 held its inaugural race on May 30, 1911, an AP report made no mention of the holiday, or any controversy.

Dennis said Memorial Day’s potency diminished somewhat with the addition of Armistice Day, which marked the end of World War I on Nov. 11, 1918. Armistice Day became a national holiday by 1938 and was renamed Veterans Day in 1954.

In 1971, Congress changed Memorial Day from every May 30 to the last Monday in May. Dennis said the creation of the three-day weekend recognized that Memorial Day had been transformed into a more generic remembrance of the dead, as well as a day of leisure.

A year later, Time Magazine wrote that the holiday had become “a three-day nationwide hootenanny that seems to have lost much of its original purpose.”

Even in the 19th century, grave ceremonies were followed by leisure activities such as picnicking and foot races, Dennis said.

The holiday also evolved alongside baseball and the automobile, the five-day work week and summer vacation, according to the 2002 book “A History of Memorial Day: Unity, Discord and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

In the mid-20th century, a small number of businesses began to open defiantly on the holiday.

Once the holiday moved to Monday, “the traditional barriers against doing business began to crumble,” authors Richard Harmond and Thomas Curran wrote.

These days, Memorial Day sales and traveling are deeply woven into the nation’s muscle memory.

FILE - Richard Cross touches his grandmother's headstone while visiting Leavenworth National Cemetery on the eve of Memorial Day, Sunday, May 25, 2025, in Leavenworth, Kan. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel, file)

FILE - Eugene and Linda Lamie, of Homerville, Ga., sit by the grave of their son U.S. Army Sgt. Gene Lamie in Section 60 at Arlington National Cemetery on Memorial Day, Monday, May 29, 2023, in Arlington, Va. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, file)