Avalanche blow three-goal lead in ugly loss to Devils

I like when games unfold that are pretty straightforward and easy to write about. The Avs have played so many odd games this season that tonight’s 5-3 loss to the Devils feels almost refreshing to write about simply because it boils down to a couple of hard facts that produced the result.

Those facts:

The Avs did not play quality hockey pretty much at any point in this game and deserved to lose. The Devils outworked and outplayed the Avs and got the final result they deserved.

The complicating factor in this story is that a 5-3 final score was at one point 3-0 in favor of Colorado. The Avs, despite not playing well at all, led 2-0 after the first period and made it 3-0 just over five minutes into the second period when Cale Makar potted a rebound for his 21st goal of the year.

At that time, they were getting outshot, outchanced, outworked, all of it. They just capitalized on their chances and New Jersey didn’t. Instead of taking their good fortune and turning it into what should have been a victory, the Avs never turned up their intensity and the Devils kept their foot on the gas and blew the doors off Colorado in the second half of the game.

Look, let’s be real here. Three of the four goals the Devils scored against Darcy Kuemper involved quite a bit of luck.

The first New Jersey goal only happened because Mikko Rantanen’s stick exploded at the Devils’ blue line when he had the puck and it created the possession to begin with. Rantanen’s man in the defensive zone then was the one to score the goal a few moments later as Rantanen couldn’t tie up a stick or do much about it at all.

The second New Jersey goal was a shot that took a sharp turn off Sam Girard and past Kuemper. The fourth goal, the game-winning goal in the final seven minutes of the third period, was a Jack Hughes shot that was sailing wide but found Nathan Bastian’s body and then landed on his stick behind Kuemper.

That’s three gifts from the hockey gods. It just is. That’s reality.

It’s also one of the old axioms of every sport that “you make your own luck.” Tonight was an excellent example of the Devils manifesting their good fortune by consistently winning footraces to loose pucks, winning the board battles, winning every little facet of the game. They outshot Colorado in all three periods, ending with a whopping 43-26 advantage.

To be honest, it just shouldn’t have been that close of a game. It’s a game where you want your goaltender to stand on his head and lock it down, but when you look at the goals against, you also can’t genuinely ask Darcy Kuemper to do a whole lot different. It just wasn’t Colorado’s night and that’s that.

It’s an ugly loss because of the 3-0 lead but on the second night of a back-to-back against a team that didn’t play the night before, this is just how the world works sometimes.

In fact, this was Colorado’s first regulation loss in the second half of a back-to-back in the last two seasons. It is also the first time the Avs lost when entering first intermission with a lead. They are now 23-1-0.

The team will land in Carolina sometime later tonight and will have some time to rest and relax before Thursday’s clash of President’s Trophy contenders. The Avs currently sit four points ahead of the Hurricanes for first in the NHL.

TAKEAWAYS

• I’ve criticized him plenty this season and don’t ever like piling on when a guy is struggling but the Avalanche simply need better from Sam Girard. Not having Bowen Byram has really put a bright spotlight on Girard and since Jack Johnson was put next to him, Girard has cratered offensively. I think Girard has a lot of room to play better, but the team is once again in the situation where Girard isn’t getting a ton of help playing alongside a player who provides very little value on the offensive side of the puck. The problem is that Erik Johnson and Ryan Murray haven’t been reliably better than J. Johnson, so the coaching staff is in a tough spot here. You’re not breaking up the exceptional Toews-Makar duo just to try to get Girard going. Easiest solution is to simply get better play from Girard, who has shown so much better in the last two seasons than what he’s brought to the table this year. He’s a quality two-way defenseman mired in a bad stretch of hockey. The Avs need him to break out.
• No, I’m not worried about the goaltending.
• Things have worked out fine so far and all but I will always be curious what the world looks like where the Avs win the 2019 lotto with Ottawa’s selection and land Jack Hughes. He’s such an electric skater and dynamic player with the puck, he would’ve been an unbelievable fit in Colorado. Maybe the Nazem Kadri deal doesn’t happen. Maybe it does. Who knows what all changes? Hughes in this system and surrounded by this collection of talent though? Will always feel a little annoyed the lotto gods robbed us of getting to see that All-Star team together. He’s a hell of a player already.