Another ugly effort from Avs results in third consecutive loss

Depth is really important in the NHL, but I would venture a guess that on at least seven out of every 10 games that an NHL team plays, the results will follow how a team’s best players do.

In tonight’s 6-3 loss to the Edmonton Oilers, we saw Colorado’s best players fail to really show up and impact the game at a meaningful level once again and the result they got looked well-earned to my eye.

Fair or not, goaltender is kind of like quarterback in football. Everyone else is allowed to have a bad game except that guy. If that player struggles, the team is going to struggle to win. That’s just the nature of each position.

For Darcy Kuemper, he’s been so good for so many months now that seeing him play as poorly as he did tonight in Edmonton was a little shocking. As much as he didn’t look it at times throughout the last five months, he is indeed human and we saw just how hard it can be to win when he isn’t playing well.

There was a bad bounce along the way, of course, as Edmonton’s second goal was the stuff of Calvin Pickard’s nightmares but the rest you could easily argue Kuemper has room to make a significantly better play somewhere throughout the process.

Five goals on 26 shots just isn’t that heavy of a workload, especially when you consider he made 49 saves against this same team two weeks ago. Kuemper didn’t have the goods tonight and, speaking of bad bounces, there was nothing the Avs could do about it because Pavel Francouz took a puck to the face just moments into the game while sitting on the Avalanche bench.

He did not return and the beloved EBUG replaced him on Colorado’s bench for the rest of the night. Had Francouz been available, who knows if Kuemper would have gotten the hook and things might have gone differently. That isn’t the universe we’re living in so we aren’t wasting any more time on it.

While Kuemper wasn’t any good, the team in front of him also didn’t do him a ton of favors as they blew obvious assignments on multiple goals and the players you were looking at were ones whose roles will certainly be marginalized a touch when Colorado decides to bring back the big guns (Gabe Landeskog, Mikko Rantanen, Devon Toews, kind of Erik Johnson?).

It just wasn’t a good hockey game from Colorado’s side. Effort was better than the Seattle game two nights ago, but execution was still poor and then you add in poor goaltending from Kuemper and you have the right mixture for a nice win for Oilers media to get hyped about.

Even though Nathan MacKinnon finished with a goal and an assist, watching the game it was hard to feel like he was going even 50%, especially during Colorado’s six power play opportunities.

The game really took a turn because of the team’s horrific night with the man advantage. Starting the second period with a full minute of a two-man advantage, the Avs attempted zero shots, passed the puck harmlessly back and forth between the point and the half wall, and even had plays broken up twice by a Leon Draisaitl stick somehow getting into a passing lane despite all of the space afforded having two extra players on the ice.

It was beyond listless. There was no sense of urgency, no passion, no attempt to make a play, no attempt at forcing the Oilers to make a play, seemingly no plan whatsoever. Nobody wanted the puck and those who had it chose to do nothing with it.

Between MacKinnon, Cale Makar and Nazem Kadri, there was absolutely no chemistry on the ice whatsoever. Kadri is just in his second game back so at least he can say he’s still knocking off the rust. The failure of that unit to even apply pressure, not even just score but create something dangerous, is just inexcusable.

That unit cannot be that bad moving forward. They needed better and didn’t get it. The Oilers built momentum from the easy kills and worked their way into taking over and controlling the game.

For me, that’s where this game was decided. Missing as many key contributors as the Avs were, it’s on the remaining names to make it happen. It wasn’t just MacKinnon, of course. Makar, Kadri, Sam Girard, Andre Burakovsky (despite two assists), none of them were the game-changers we’ve seen them be before. They all have the ability to raise their games to higher levels and not one of them did it.

That happens sometimes, and it’s when you need those depth guys to make up for it. Alex Newhook might have just finished his worst three-game stretch of the season and J.T. Compher is once again reminding us all why he’s not in Colorado’s top six when healthy while Nico Sturm has been overplayed out of necessity his entire Avalanche tenure.

Artturi Lehkonen has had a solid string of games so him having a weaker night tonight isn’t a shocking development.

I liked Bowen Byram’s game except his work in front of his own net (again) and Josh Manson has somehow been more fun to watch trying to pinch all the time on offense but got eaten alive one-on-one by Evander Kane.

That’s the endgame of the story from tonight. Every pro came with a con, but not every con was met with a pro. The cons stacked up enough and the Avs are on their first three-game losing streak since back in October.

If this all is overly negative, and it is, it’s just because it was a bad night for the Avalanche. I’m not sounding an alarm or pushing a panic button. They just aren’t playing great hockey right now. They’re also not playing their real lineup.

I would absolutely be concerned about the postseason if somehow this ends up being the lineup in a game that actually means something for the Avalanche. For right now, the club is still on track to get all of its horses back for the real race. The Avs are stumbling through this portion of qualifying, but they have four more games left before the real stuff gets going again.

TAKEAWAYS

• I didn’t mention him above, but Val Nichushkin scored twice in this game and he continues to be a steady presence in Colorado’s lineup. He might make as much money as Nazem Kadri next season, a thought that would have been insane a year ago. A lot has changed for Nichushkin, however, and he’s absolutely rolling right now. I genuinely don’t have a single negative thing to say about his game. I think it’s time I do a real stat deep dive so people can see that their eyes are not lying about him; he legitimately makes every line he touches better.
• It says something that this is where my head is right now but I sure hope Kuemper’s poor two-week stretch here doesn’t dominate the voting bloc’s mindset when considering their Vezina ballots. Recency bias is a hell of a drug but Kuemper is a major reason the Avs are free to essentially take a two-week break at the end here. He has an exceptional body of work and deserves Vezina love.
• Byram added an assist tonight to give him 16 points in 27 games this season. If anyone is curious, that is a 48-point pace across 82 games. He’s a major x-factor for this club in the playoffs. I remember watching him absolutely carry his Vancouver Giants to within one goal of the Memorial Cup and was the first and, for now, only defenseman to ever lead the WHL in goals during the postseason. He has shown the kind of big game flair that makes you think the Stanley Cup Playoffs will be the stage he shines the brightest on. I can’t wait.
• Francouz appears to be okay but took the puck right near his eye and the team was just being careful (noticing a theme here…) with him tonight. We’ll see how he’s doing when they get here into Winnipeg this weekend. He better be okay. The universe owes him better luck than what he’s had the last two years.
• Andre Burakovsky might be the hardest high-profile free agent evaluation I’ve worked on in my time covering the Avalanche. His pros and cons are so strongly defined and the eyes and the numbers tell very different stories. Tonight was a great example, honestly. I didn’t think he was any good at all and he finished with two assists. That happens to guys playing next to a talent such as MacKinnon sometimes. It’s just natural, but this kind of thing happens a lot for Burakovsky. He got to the 60-point threshold tonight! Would any of us have considered a world where he hit that level of production and you thought “they really have to be careful not to overpay this guy, he disappears a little too much…”? He’s in the top 70 of all players in the NHL in scoring! What an interesting player he is.