Avs-Islanders Game 6 Studs & Duds

Studs

Mikko Rantanen

Another four-point night from an Avalanche player. For the second time this season, it was Rantanen’s turn to get it done. He ended up scoring the game-winning goal in a wild back-and-forth contest but added three primary assists to boot. His 5v5 line next to Ryan Johansen didn’t have a great night but all three members (along with Tomas Tatar) scored points tonight, not too shabby when I’m talking about them having bad shot metrics tonight.

To the eyes, Rantanen was the most dialed-in of Colorado’s stars early on and was making plays all over the ice. When he’s completely engaged in a game, there are very few players who can top the overall impact he makes and this game served to reinforce that belief.

His playmaking has always been underrated despite his gaudy point totals and you see it on a perfect backhand sauce pass to Ryan Johansen on the first goal of the game. He’s an elite player and tonight he did, well, elite player things.

Cale Makar

The other star player for the Avalanche who got it going early on was Makar. His legs were game-changing early on and it was his play that sprung Colorado’s first goal and then he made an all-world play on the second goal for the Avs. I mean all-world. The shiftiness through the neutral zone and then entering the offensive zone with the puck, all that of stuff is amazing to watch but is pretty standard Makar stuff.

That kind of backhand shot though? That’s the kind of talent you only see out of a handful of players in the world, including the aforementioned Rantanen. Makar doing it is absurd and he’s now up to nine points through six games this season. He’s unlike any other defenseman in the league.

He added an assist on Bowen Byram’s late second period goal that flipped the game on its head. To think he put a shot wide on a breakaway, too. What a special talent.

Bowen Byram

When you know a player is really struggling and something finally goes right for him, sometimes you can see just how much it means. When Byram scored the goal with under a minute left to play in the second period to tie the game at 3-3, he reacted like a player who just had a significant weight lifted off his shoulders.

It was a primal roar for the kid and he absolutely needed something to go his way. His season up until tonight had been a parade to the penalty box and very little of the high-end two-way game we’ve frequently seen those flashes of over the last few seasons.

Tonight, all of that changed. There were still shaky moments and a few questionable reads, but overall this game was easily his best of the season and the excellent finish for his goal tonight changed the momentum in the game and put the Islanders back on their heels. The Avs needed it and Byram needed it. Great night for both.

Resiliency

The Avs had leads in this game of 1-0, 2-1, and 4-3. They lost all of them before eventually pulling ahead 5-4 and finishing at 7-4. They did not get a great night from their goaltender. They had a ghastly second period where they looked unorganized and out of sorts in all phases.

Against an elite goaltender such as Ilya Sorokin, this could have been a game where the Avs packed it in and said it just wasn’t their night. That has not been their approach this season, however. They’ve been excellent in third periods through the first five games and giving up the lead in the first five minutes was disappointing and another feeling that maybe the Avs just weren’t going to be able to outscore their problems tonight.

But the Avs bucked up, locked it down defensively and Rantanen’s goal to put them up 5-4 was followed by two empty-net goals, one from the Avs and one from the Isles into their own net, but the Islanders never really got their game going in the right direction. In all situations, New York managed just six scoring chances and three high-danger chances in the final 20 minutes.

That’s a great defensive response to adversity. For as much as Colorado is known for their high-flying offense and highlight-reel goals, the true heart and soul of this team’s success lies with its team defense. That’s where they have to get it done late in games and they did exactly that yet again tonight.

Resiliency is a major reason the Avalanche set the NHL record tonight for the most consecutive road games won in the regular season. It’s a cool piece of history for Colorado, who chased the home winning stream a few years ago, too.

Duds

Alexandar Georgiev

Georgiev gave up four goals against Carolina but it didn’t feel like he could have done too much differently to prevent most of them. Tonight, Georgiev gave up another four and there will be plenty for him to look back on video and improve upon. He wasn’t without some huge saves along the way, of course, but like Sorokin on the other end, there were too many freebies given to the opposing team in what should have been a battle of great goaltending.

The final two Islanders goals, in particular, were really tough for me. He was a little deeper in his net than I’d probably like on the third goal and the fourth goal is one that really should not happen. It’s a clear shooting lane from distance and nothing funky happens on it. The placement of the shot is fine, but Anders Lee doesn’t have a special shot and scoring from distance is not a thing he does. It’s not a thing he should have done tonight, either.

While Georgiev has played the first six games of the season, there has been a significant amount of rest along the way so I’m struggling to place the blame for tonight’s performance primarily on fatigue, but it will be interesting to see what Jared Bednar decides to do the rest of this road trip. The Avs are in Pittsburgh on Thursday but then have another two days off before the Sunday matinee in Buffalo.

Ryan Johansen

I’m not sure I’ve ever called a player who scored two goals a “dud” before so I guess tonight is a first for everything. The goals are obviously great and the Avs needed both of them but both were the result of Rantanen making great plays to give Johansen an easy finish, so I’m not giving them the weight that I normally do.

I didn’t like Johansen’s game very much tonight. The Avs were flying as a team and his skating looked like a Lars Eller-sized misfit when Colorado’s team speed was as prominent as it was in this game. The speed is always going to be a challenge and there isn’t much Johansen can do about that, but the things he can control weren’t very good.

He got carved up at 5v5 with a 34% Corsi For and an Expected Goals of just 32%. The Isles controlled play by a wide margin with him on the ice and it was his defensive zone miscue that led directly to the scoring chance Lee got on New York’s fourth goal. I can dislike that goal against Georgiev all I want but the reality is that Johansen had an easy play to get the puck out of his own zone, fumbled it, then couldn’t recover when Lee slipped away with the puck. It was just awful work.

An area where Johansen has been very good this year is the faceoff circle and even that was a mess tonight with him winning only 33% of his draws. Even worse, he won only one out of eight faceoffs in the defensive zone. That’s an area he has been a boon even when the rest of his game wasn’t great but tonight all of it was pretty dismal. Yet, two goals. Hockey.

Unsung Hero

Valeri Nichushkin

Holy smokes what a night for Nichushkin. The underlying numbers are good and all (64% CF, 62% xGF), but digging into the individual work by Nichushkin you see what a huge impact he made on the game. I add the caveat that it wasn’t perfect, of course, and his work along the wall on the third New York goal leaves an awful lot to be desired.

Nichushkin had the primary assists on both of Colorado’s goals just 13 seconds apart at the end of the second period, however, and both were nice plays by him.

The first is pretty standard stuff where he skates the puck into the zone, goes into the corner, then finds Byram out high. That’s good, quality hockey and taking what the defense was giving him instead of trying to force the puck into the middle of the ice. That’s quality hockey.

The second assist, though, is a comically great play from Nichushkin. Josh Manson dumped the puck into the Islanders zone and Cal Clutterbuck misplayed it a bit as he tried to move it back to Noah Dobson. Nichushkin intercepted the puck and instead of taking his time and looking around, he one-touched it between his own legs into space where Nathan MacKinnon skated into it and scored.

MacKinnon hasn’t even started that action when Nichushkin gets to that puck, but he knows that’s where his linemate is heading and he trusts MacKinnon to win the footrace. He was right and MacKinnon rewarded him.

The rest of the night, Nichushkin was a chaos monster along the wall and he used his skating and forechecking acumen to disrupt the Islanders all game. This was an impressive performance.