The new pieces helped the Avalanche to an early lead that held up in Los Angeles.

Offseason acquisitions Brandon Saad and Devon Toews scored goals and Colorado held off the Kings 3-2 on Tuesday night.

Saad’s goal was his first with the Avs since he came over from the Chicago Blackhawks in a trade for Nikita Zadorov and Anton Lindholm in October.

“You want to show you can do it and can pitch in,” said Saad, who scored 169 goals over his first nine years in the NHL with Chicago and Columbus.

Toews, acquired from the New York Islanders for a pair of second-round picks, has scored goals in two straight games.

“Our deception’s good, our puck movement’s really good right now,” said Toews, who scored goals in back-to-back games for the first time in his three-year career.

Mikko Rantanen scored the third goal for the Avs.

The second-period goals came less than 2 minutes apart.

“The two power-play goals couldn’t have come at a better time for us,” said Colorado coach Jared Bednar, who praised the team’s execution in the first period against a rugged Kings defense but felt the team had begun losing steam yet managed to keep adding goals at a point when the game could have changed direction.

The Avalanche have adopted a Stanley Cup-or-bust mentality following two straight conference semifinal exits in the playoffs and have shown that urgency since opening the season with a 4-1 loss to St. Louis on Jan. 13. They followed that with an 8-0 victory over the Blues and then jumped ahead 3-0 on Tuesday behind Saad’s quick goal in the first period and a pair of power-play goals in the second. They outscored opponents 11-0 for 117 minutes after that opening dud.

The Kings made it tight with goals from Andreas Athanasiou and Adrian Kempe, making it a one-goal game for the final 5:38.

While the new names made their presence known here in Game 3 following the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it 10-day training camp in early January, it was a franchise cornerstone who reached a milestone for Colorado.

Nathan MacKinnon’s assist in the second period gave him two points in the game and 500 in his career, making him the seventh player in franchise history to reach that mark. He trails only Joe Sakic (1,641), Peter Stastny (1,048), Michel Goulet (946), Milan Hejduk (805), Peter Forsberg (755) and Anton Stastny (636) on the franchise scoring list.

MacKinnon noted that he would like to have reached 500 earlier but was proud of the accomplishment.

“Obviously it’s a cool milestone,” he said. “Five-hundred points in the NHL is not an easy thing to achieve.”

The Avalanche drafted MacKinnon first overall in the 2013 draft, and he is the first from that class to reach 500 points. Sean Monahan trails him with 415 points and Aleksander Barkov has 408.