Landeskog hat trick sparks comeback as Avs ground the Jets again

I was asked during a little mini-interview pre-game, “why is this game important?”, and truthfully I was really tempted to look right at the camera and say “it’s not”. Obviously, I didn’t say that, your boy is a professional and that’s show biz, baby, but that was how it felt coming into it.

The Colorado Avalanche has a 12-point lead on the next closest Western Conference team, and the Winnipeg Jets, while not completely out of the playoff race, have a steep hill to climb and are likely going to be sellers three weeks from now at the NHL trade deadline.

This felt like just another Friday night game, against an opponent that the Avs absolutely ran out of town last time they played, that ultimately wouldn’t really amount to anything meaningful. 

Oh, how wrong I was. This turned into another opportunity for the Avalanche to prove just how good they are, as they rallied from a three-goal deficit to mop up the Jets 6-3.

Less than three minutes into the game I was feeling pretty confident in that assumption. The Avalanche came out of the gates with a ton of energy on the first two shifts but ultimately surrendered a goal as their fourth line got caught on a mismatch against Winnipeg’s top offensive unit. That really seemed to set a tone in the building. You got the sense that it may be one of those nights where things go the Jets’ way, despite Colorado being the better team.

Fast forward five minutes, and the Avs found themselves in a familiar predicament. The fourth line was just getting eaten up by Jets’ top producers, and after what felt like an eternity of sustained pressure, Winnipeg found the back of the net again.

To that point, play had felt relatively even. Lines 1-3 for the Avs were still pushing play up the ice, getting decent looks, but they just couldn’t get a bounce in the offensive zone to get the scoring going. 

With under five minutes to go in the opening frame, Josh Morrissey slashed Val Nichushkin below the goal line and was called for a penalty. Here it is, right? Here’s the break they were looking for to get back into the game and cut the lead in half.

Wrong.

Devon Toews made a highly uncharacteristic blunder at the offensive blue line and handed Adam Lowry a shorthanded breakaway on a silver platter, and Lowry made no mistake as he blew one right by Avalanche goaltender Pavel Francouz.

While you could make the argument that it was a great shot he put on net, you could just as easily make the argument that Pavel Francouz needed to find a way to come up with a save in that moment to keep the game close and his team within striking distance.

For the last four-ish minutes of the opening period, the Avs looked a little stunned. The Jets were feeling it, and the Avalanche couldn’t believe they were down by three given that they really hadn’t played poorly.

The Avs came out of the dressing room for period two and absolutely took it to Winnipeg for 40 consecutive minutes. The Jets never stood a chance. Winnipeg netminder Connor Hellebuyck did everything he could for the first 10 minutes of the second, fighting off high danger chance after high danger chance to try and keep his team out in front.

Eventually, though, it was Gabe Landeskog who took a pass down low and slipped it through Hellebuyck’s five-hole to finally breakthrough, and that opened the floodgates. Both for the team and for Landeskog individually (more on that in a moment).

Ball Arena came to life, and it carried right through to the players on the ice. Despite still being down by two, the Avalanche suddenly were firmly in control of play and were dictating the pace and style of play in all three zones.

Hellebuyck was still standing on his head, and it looked like he was maybe going to be able to help the Jets weather the storm despite giving one up. Then Nathan MacKinnon carried the puck into the zone.

After sitting out the last game for precautionary reasons, Nathan MacKinnon played what Jared Bednar described as “[his] best game of the season”. MacK came absolutely flying into the offensive zone, and fired a laser beam past Hellebuyck, who looked like he never even saw it.

After that, it was a gorgeous tip in front by Landy to tie it, then Andre Burakovsky finally broke out of a 17 game scoring slump, followed by more Landeskog and MacKinnon. All told, the Avs would end up scoring six unanswered goals to put an exclamation point on what went from being a game to forget, to one of the most dominant performances we’ve seen from this group since, well, the last time the Jets were in town in January.

The Avs don’t have much time to feel good about themselves as they are jumping on a plane tonight to head to Vegas to take on the Golden Knights tomorrow. Both teams played tonight and both teams will travel, so all bets are off for what type of game we’ll see.

Observations:

• Don’t have a ton of groundbreaking obs for you all tonight, but let’s start with the captain. Gabe Landeskog scored his 26th, 27th, and 28th goals of the season, which now gives him 14 goals in his last 14 games. Look, he’s always had such a sneaky important role for this Avs team on that top line, but he is taking it to another level this season. Who would’ve thought that on February 25th, Landeskog would be leading the Avalanche in goals? Certainly not me.
• Andre Burakovsky got a haircut. We joked this morning in the media room that he did it to try and break out of this brutal scoring slump he had been in. As it turns out, that wasn’t a joke, and that was exactly what Burakovsky was doing. “I’ve grown my hair out a bit, it was time for a change and it worked out” he said postgame. Burakovsky is a guy whose plays goes as his confidence does, and he needed that one to get his confidence back going in the right direction.
• Jared Bednar mixed up his lines tonight. He said postgame that he’s wanting to get some different looks, so that if he’s needing to make adjustments come playoff time, he has an idea of things and combinations that have worked in the past. Most of the shuffling came in the top six, and I think it’s safe to say it worked out. Colorado’s top two lines combined for all six goals, and 14 combined points. Landeskog netted all three goals on a line win Nichushkin and Kadri, while Burakovsky and MacKinnon added three more while playing with Rantanen. Expect to ultimately see Bednar go back to the lines we’re used to, but now he knows he’s got this grouping in his back pocket.
• Last one here, and I don’t want to beat up on guys, but the fourth line was not good tonight, and Bednar was not happy. Only Darren Helm hit double digits in terms of total shifts, and when I asked Bednar what the conversation sounded like with that line before effectively benching them for the second period, his response… “I didn’t have one”. Yikes.