Colorado's stars shine brightest as revenge against Sharks gets a little sweeter

The San Jose Sharks suck this year.

After how last year ended for the Avalanche, I’m sure there’s some real schadenfreude going on with regards to how the Sharks have fallen apart and won’t even have their own draft pick to benefit from this lost season of theirs.

But up close and back in the Shark Tank for the first time since Game 7 last spring, the Avs had business to take care of. Still battered and missing about half their forward corps and two of their regular defensemen (one by choice, however, as Nikita Zadorov was a healthy scratch again), the Avs mustered the offense they’ve struggled to get in a 4-3 win.

It was Colorado’s first time scoring four goals in a game since February 6 (a 4-1 win at Ottawa) and it came when the Avs badly needed it.

“Badly needed it” is relative, though. The Avs are solidly in the postseason and it would take a monumental collapse at this point for them to miss the NHL’s second season. They simply needed it to keep pace with the St. Louis Blues, who beat Chicago earlier in the evening, as they have made the race for the Central Division a two-horse race.

The main horse for the Avs tonight, however, was once again Nathan MacKinnon. Having slowly worked his way down the Hart Trophy conversation despite the injury problems opening the door for him to come roaring through, MacKinnon has really found his game in the last few games.

He opened the scoring for the Avs tonight with a one-timer on the power play that tied the game at one, came roaring down the ice and dismantled the porous San Jose defense en route to creating the rebound that Gabe Landeskog jammed home for their second goal, and both players created the passing play that led to Vlad Namestnikov banging home his third goal as an Av.

That accounted for three of Colorado’s goals. Leading 3-2 in the waning moments of a game that had at times been wide open with way too many scoring chances for Jared Bednar’s liking, you knew the Avs were going to need a little extra push.

They got that push from Joonas Donskoi, who tipped home a J.T. Compher centering pass to beat Martin Jones and give the Avs four goals and the two-goal cushion they were definitely in need of.

That insurance goal turned into the game-winning goal when San Jose scored on the power play with just about a minute remaining in the game but Colorado shut the door from there.

Colorado now has 90 points on the season, matching their 82-game total from last year. They have 14 games remaining in the regular season.

GAME TAKEAWAYS

• The Avs have been playing all manners of games lately and this game had everything. A sloppy first period dominated by special teams results, a wide-open second that saw grade-A scoring chances for both teams, and a much more physical third indicative of the one-goal game it became. From my seat, this is all just good experience for Colorado either way. They’re getting more comfortable in a more varied group of game situations instead of earlier this year where they either blew teams out early or got behind and never came back. The fact that Colorado has won so many one-goal decisions lately just reinforces the idea that these injury issues have forced this club to confront an identity that was a little too one-dimensional earlier in the year. They’ve become a much grittier, hard-nosed group because of the adversity their crazy injury problems.
• This ended up being a lot more like last year’s team as the top line dominated and did the majority of the scoring and they needed just the extra goal from the rest of the team to get them across the finish line. Depth has come up huge so many times during this recent spate with injuries that watching MacKinnon and Landeskog just take over a game almost felt foreign. They’ve been steady contributors throughout the last month, of course, but having them be THE offense for the Avs was something that definitely needed to happen.
• Pavel Francouz’s quest to stealing Philipp Grubauer’s job wasn’t helped tonight even though I don’t think he played poorly. I thought he was just okay but the goals late in the game have been a problem for both him and Grubauer. Given my gut feeling still says Bednar views Grubauer as his number one, any game that doesn’t actively push the needle in the other direction is a missed opportunity. Tonight felt like that for Francouz as he has now given up four, five, and three goals in his last three starts. That’s 12 goals in three games, which matches the total number of goals he’d given up in his previous seven starts combined. You knew regression was coming but it needs to slow down just a little bit for him. Huge stop on the breakaway in the second period to keep it 3-2, though. Huge.
• That said, Francouz only faced 25 shots tonight. I bet they play him against a streaking Kings team that seems to be finding its stride right now. They need to put their best foot forward in this chase for the Central Division.
• Val Nichushkin played just over 12 minutes tonight but had five shots on goal and three hits. I’ve really taken a shine to watching him play as his game is so steady every night. He does great work defensively and while his game isn’t very flashy on offense, he plays with no fear and his straight-forward approach serves him well in consistently making good decisions with the puck. When he tries to engage his more creative impulses, he can get in some trouble but mostly when he just keeps the puck moving forward and going to the net, he’s being effective.
• J.T. Compher was another of the non-stars who I thought really elevated his game. Sometimes he plays 20 minutes and I might notice him once or twice. I really liked his game tonight as he was that combination of hard-nosed and effective and that’s when he’s at his best. He mixes it up well and can attack teams with speed and a little dash of playmaking, as we’ve seen this year as he tacked two more assists on to what has been a career year for him in that department. He made a perfect little chip to Donskoi on the game-winning goal.
• Logan Couture took a puck to the face early in the game and left the ice immediately and did not return. The play was whistled down immediately and then he properly went through concussion protocol and the postgame news sounded like it shouldn’t be anything long-term for him. That’s great news and it was great to see the league continue to take injuries like that seriously. We all saw the nonsense in Vancouver earlier this year with Matt Calvert and, for once, it appears the league heard the fans and players out and have made meaningful adjustments in that area. I criticize the league a lot for some of its decisions but that’s nothing but thumbs up from me.