Avs-Kraken Game 12 Studs & Duds

Studs

Bowen Byram

This was my favorite game of the year from Byram. I get into my frustration with the defense at the bottom of this piece, but I thought Byram was awesome tonight. He skated the puck out of trouble and into danger for the Kraken. He attacked up the ice with his skating and aggressive mentality.

He put pressure on Seattle, a team that has to be consistently pressured into playing on their heels or else they’ll play on their toes and attack you in return. He scored a goal on an odd-man rush with Nathan MacKinnon with a great shot. He picks a spot and finishes. It’s great stuff, but his game was so much more than that.

The third period penalty is going to be a “your mileage may very” kind of decision from Byram. Andrew Cogliano gets smoked from behind and Byram is standing up for his guy. I love that aspect of it.

What I don’t love is that it comes one minute after the Avs tied the game and had all of the momentum. Colorado had allowed only one shot on goal in the third period to that point and Byram sticking up for Cogliano put the Avs back on the penalty kill and sapped that momentum from the Avs.

That isn’t why they lost as they killed off the penalties from Byram and I love that he was fighting for his guy. I am hopeful that Byram is growing up for real this time.

Valeri Nichushkin

I was frustrated with some of Nichushkin’s play throughout the game, but he had another strong effort and was rewarded with a tip-in goal that tied the game in the third period. He had played his classic brand of physical two-way hockey and when Artturi Lehkonen was injured he stepped into the role alongside Nathan MacKinnon and Mikko Rantanen and played his best hockey of the game. It’s that new-dad strength.

Nathan MacKinnon

He finished with three points against the Kraken and looked like the elite player we’ve come to expect from him. It seems like ages since MacKinnon and Rantanen both completely dominated a game together, but that’s only because the losses from the Avalanche this season have been so ugly that the good days feel like eons ago already.

I wasn’t totally in love with MacKinnon’s game on live viewing, but in rewatching it I really felt his dominance tonight. He came so, so close to disrupting that second Kraken goal, too. Another half-second and he would have been able to break up the play.

Limiting chances

The Kraken came into tonight 25th in scoring chances per game with a little over 27 and 31st in high-danger chances per game with about 10. The Avs limited them to only 20 scoring chances and seven high-danger chances. For Seattle to already be one of the league’s worst teams at creating quality looks and Colorado to hold them below those averages says a lot of the quality of Colorado’s team defense tonight. It’s too bad it didn’t translate into less than four goals given up.

Duds

Artturi Lehkonen

Lehkonen went headfirst into the boards and it did not look good. He later was transported to the hospital to continue their evaluation of him. He’s only in this space because injuries are the worst and we hope for the best for him.

Ivan Prosvetov

I’ve said this in this space before, but criticizing a goaltender so frequently seems to be perceived as blaming an entire loss on them and we all know that is never true. One player doesn’t win or lose a hockey game alone.

That said, Prosvetov did not seem up to the task tonight. He made some nice saves along the way, including a couple on odd-man rushes or outright breakaways, but four goals got by him and none of them were particularly great plays or special shots. The first goal, Prosvetov clearly doesn’t track the puck well and Jaden Schwartz beats him cleanly with a routine shot. Here’s what it looks like when he releases the shot:

Two things are working against him in that Rantanen lost his stick and couldn’t get in the shooting lane and the screen right in front of him causes him trouble, but that is entirely too much net to shoot at.

The third goal is just as much about the coverage in front of him as anything as Matty Beniers walks in completely alone. Devon Toews does get a light push in the back and Josh Manson is covering the back door, but for Beniers to have that freedom to walk in like that is poor coverage.

Prosvetov is in great position and the shot gets through where his glove is positioned in that picture. When he drops down, the glove drops with him and that’s where the puck goes. Breakdowns aside, that should be a stop.

The fourth goal is a really soft rebound that I think he probably should have corralled better, but he needed a little more help from the guy below.

I’m not making any sweeping judgments about Prosvetov’s viability as Colorado’s backup moving forward, only that I think he played poorly tonight. I didn’t think he was good enough.

Ross Colton

I don’t think Colton had much of an impact (positive or negative) on this game for 59 minutes and then he loses all track of what he should be doing on the final sequence and Sam Girard can’t get out there to pick up Oliver Bjorkstrand.

Had Colton simply followed Bjorkstrand around the net, there’s a pretty good chance that the rebound off Ivan Prosvetov is at least a competitive puck and not an easy second goal of the night for the Kraken forward. Instead, he inexplicably covered nothing when he moved to the front of the net despite both defensemen on the ice already marking players and Colton’s guy slipped off and scored the game-winning goal in the final minute.

Colton’s reaction of breaking his stick against the post was Avs fans, players, coaches, and everyone else hoping the Avs could at least get a point from the night. A bad breakdown at a crucial moment.

The camera work

I preface this by saying that producing live sports on television is extremely complicated and not easy at all, but when it comes to a medium that requires moving pictures to be successful, the baseline for a quality hockey broadcast is keeping the puck on the screen. I have no idea why it was such a challenge tonight but it made trying to keep up with the action far more challenging than it should have been. We all have off nights, but this was awfully frustrating.

Unsung Hero

The defensemen

I really liked Bowen Byram and I know Cale Makar and Devon Toews had absolutely dominant shot metrics tonight, but it didn’t stop it from feeling as if something was still…off with the defense. I thought the team defense was actually pretty good.

It’s hard to complain about an effort that saw the Avs only give up 22 shots on goal in the game, but the two-way effort from the Avalanche felt a little lacking. Byram scored and Makar and Toews added assists and those were obviously needed, but the group didn’t seem to attack as much up the ice and work to stress that tightly-packed Kraken neutral zone system.

Maybe my frustration here was that they felt disjointed the rest of the night beyond a couple of isolated plays, but the lack of clear cohesion was obvious as the game wore on. Colorado is reliant on their defenders attacking on offense and I didn’t like how that part of the game played out on the whole.