There are a lot of things you can point to in order to make a case for this year’s Colorado Avalanche team as a Stanley Cup contender. Certainly their last game, an 8-0 blowout of the St. Louis Blues, is the kind of thing that gets people’s attention but for me it’s more about nights like tonight.

The truth is the NHL is full of great players and every team has enough legit guys on it that any given evening is up in doubt because any combination of the 18 skaters can go off just enough to get a team two points.

That’s why they play the games, right?

What always sticks out to me, though, is when a team has an average night but still finds a way to win. Are they just that good? Was their opponent that bad? It’s always a combination of factors that lead us to the stories we write about every contest. Every game is its own riddle waiting to be solved.

Tonight was one of those nights where the Avs outplayed the Kings in some areas but it wasn’t thorough domination and the 3-2 final score probably gives the Kings a little too much credit here. That isn’t to say they didn’t play well because they certainly had their moments.

It’s mostly that when Colorado had their best stretches of the game, they were significantly better than the Kings and those stretches got them to the finish line.

Now, the broader point I’m making here is Colorado beating a lackluster Kings team on a night where they didn’t play great hockey is evidence they’re a legit Cup contender. It’s mostly confirmation bias on my part as I’m actively seeking to reinforce a conclusion I’ve already come to (that the Avs are a Cup contender) and readily using an otherwise forgettable night to make that point.

In admitting that I’m led to this conclusion by that bias, I still think it’s a notable point. Not every game is necessarily an example of the greater strengths and weaknesses of a hockey club. Sometimes a game is just a game.

I think tonight was one of the many games from this season that we’ll throw in the hopper and struggle to recall any details about six months from now. That’s where I think this Avs team is separating from their divisional opponents. They can play mediocre, forgettable hockey and still bank two points on a consistent basis.

They aren’t relying on getting 100% every night to scrape out wins. Half their forward corps still looks like its shaking off the rust but they’re 2-1 on the season anyway.

You don’t want to see the Avs get complacent, obviously, but you only have your very best on so many nights and over the course of 25 years of Avalanche hockey, we’ve seen Colorado’s best simply doesn’t happen in California very often regardless of the strength of the teams involved.

This year is different, however, as playing each divisional opponent eight times means there’s a different level of animosity and familiarity by the end. It’s going to be trench warfare getting two points out of the California teams on a regular basis. This was a good start.

But it was just that.

A start.

TAKEAWAYS

• Nathan MacKinnon getting to 500 career points is a cool milestone. We might take his greatness for granted now that we’ve seen it nearly every game for the last three years but there was a time when he wasn’t even leading his draft class in scoring, let alone the elite player he’s become. For him to be 85 points ahead of Sean Monahan after the starts they each had to their careers is spectacular. He’s been on a truly elite level for a while and with two more points tonight he just keeps humming along. He’s 255 points behind Peter Forsberg’s Avalanche total and it’ll take him a couple of years to get there but that he’s even that close is a reminder of what we’ve seen from him.
• On his right wing, Mikko Rantanen already hit his big milestone when he got to 100 career goals. His goal tonight puts him just five behind Claude Lemieux and Valeri Kamensky. When he passes those guys, he will already be in the top 10 in Avs history in goals scored. I just find this very impressive. It’s not like the Avs have a scrubbo history of goal scorers at forward.
• A thing we don’t talk a lot about each year is the new guys getting onto the scoresheet early. There are always questions about fit and how players will handle being in a new system with new players and a new environment but scoring is one thing that settles most of these guys down quite a bit. Brandon Saad had a tough opener in an Avalanche sweater but getting his first goal tonight should settle him down quite a bit. Devon Toews has been a great fit from the start and hasn’t had the same struggles as Saad but two PP goals in the last two games really shows how nicely he has settled in already. Those were the two big offseason moves and seeing them pay off quickly and find comfort zones in an abbreviated season is huge.
• It’s always interesting when a team chooses to run an 11/7 lineup as the Avs did tonight. I can’t say I noticed anything about Dennis Gilbert at all but the rest of them looked pretty solid to me. I think there’s a lot more Cale Makar to give and Sam Girard just continues a very strong start to this season. Erik Johnson was eased back into the lineup a bit but once the game got close in the third period, Jared Bednar had no issues putting him out there and asking him to keep the lead. It just worked out this way but because of the lineup imbalance, the Avs were able to lean on Johnson a little more than they otherwise might have expected to tonight.
• Philipp Grubauer…pretty good again tonight. We’re not sure what’s going on with Pavel Francouz right now but if Grubauer has to play all the games this week, he sure looks like he’s in good enough form to do it.
• First officiating complaint of the season. The entire crew tonight…just not very good, right down to whichever linesman decided it was somehow icing at the end of the game despite Erik Johnson being ahead of the Kings player and having a clear step on him. No surprise Tim Peel was a mess, per usual, but the rest of the crew? Not fun.
• The Devon Toews-Sam Girard duo on the second power play unit is going so well that my podcast cohort asked Twitter for some shipping fan fic. Because it’s the internet, you delivered. You can read the beginning of this masterpiece here:
  

  Oops pic.twitter.com/S4Q6LkIuuN

  — Scumbag Squad (@Never_fLynch) January 20, 2021