Leafs win 'Battle of the Exes' as Barrie shines in Colorado return

“We have to play a full 60 minutes.”

One of hockey’s most-repeated cliches is all about how teams have to play a full game in order to come out with the win.

But the dirty secret is that it isn’t really true at all.

Tonight was another example of that as the Toronto Maple Leafs played a very effective 18 or so minutes in the first period, built a 4-1 lead, and spent the rest of the game fending off a slow-building Avalanche comeback.

It wasn’t that they played a full sixty minutes, it was they played a more effective 18 minutes than the Avs played the final 40 minutes.

Facing a 4-1 deficit after the first period, Colorado dominated the rest of the game. They entered that intermission down 16-8 in shots on goal.

From that point on, Colorado outscored Toronto 2-1 and outshot them 29-13.

It didn’t matter.

Colorado’s porous first period actually started perfectly with Nathan MacKinnon scoring just 31 seconds into the game.

From there, Toronto took over and beat the Avs up in a battle of the exes. Former Maple Leaf Nazem Kadri got an assist on MacKinnon’s goal and watched as the primary player he was traded for, Tyson Barrie, scored a goal and an assist in response.

The flurry of Toronto scoring finished with Kasperi Kapanen scoring on a clean breakaway after he separated from Ryan Graves and then beat Philipp Grubauer cleanly.

Grubauer was pulled after the first period and Pavel Francouz stopped all 12 shots he faced, some of which were of the spectacular variety.

Colorado scored in each of the second and third periods but it wasn’t enough in the 5-3 decision.

Andre Burakovsky scored in the second period, giving him 11 goals on the year and his first power-play goal of the year.

In the third period, the impossible finally became possible. Ian Cole hit the inside of the post and the puck ricocheted to the skate of John Tavares, where it bounced off and right to the stick of Valeri Nichushkin.

Nichushkin made no mistake and put the puck into the vacant net, giving him his first goal since March 4, 2016. It ended a string of 91 consecutive regular season games without a goal for Nichushkin and is his third point of this year.

It was all for naught, however, and the Avalanche comeback was felled by a brilliant save not by Toronto goaltender Frederik Andersen, but much-maligned defenseman Cody Ceci, who laid down and blocked a MacKinnon shot that was destined for the net as Andersen had not gotten across his crease yet.

The pressure was immense for three straight minutes with the goaltender pulled but Colorado couldn’t muster the fourth goal and an empty-net goal by Zach Hyman as time expired counted to bring the final to 5-3.

It’s the second straight loss for Colorado as they head into a much-needed three-day break to rest and heal up.

They return to action next Wednesday when the Edmonton Oilers come to town. I expect the Avs to look a little different than the last time those two teams met last week in Edmonton.

GAME TAKEAWAYS

• This was definitely the worst performance of the year from Philipp Grubauer to my eye. I don’t know there was much he could do on the first and third goals but the second goal is definitely one he needs to stop and he stood a chance on a clean breakaway, though I’m not one for dinging a goalie much on giving up a goal on breakaways. It was just the final cherry on top of a poor performance from him where things got away from the team in front of him and he wasn’t able to bail them out. That’s going to happen sometimes.
• Pavel Francouz played the last two periods and was great. He only faced 13 shots but did his job well. An encouraging performance for him as he will likely get one of the two games in the Chicago home-and-home series next week.
• Kadri finished with two assists against his former club and came close to a goal late in the third period when he deflected a puck that Andersen just got across his crease to stop. I thought he was pretty solid overall.
• What I didn’t get was Kadri playing LW next to MacKinnon for so much of the night. Really odd usage when that combination has never really worked (despite combining on the opening goal, which was soooooft). The appeal of Kadri as the 2C is to give teams a difficult assignment in matching against him both with their forwards and their D. To stack them made it easier for Sheldon Keefe to run his best options and use his superior forward depth to make life miserable against Colorado’s other lines. That’s exactly what happened. An oddity from Bednar.
• Burakovsky finished the last three seasons with 12 goals. He already has 11 this year.
• Colorado has a real problem with their defense. After a solid start, Ryan Graves has hit the wall hard and Ian Cole is clearly a third-pairing defender at this point. That’s fine and normal for a team to be in that situation but with Erik Johnson and Sam Girard trading games in which they struggle (I liked EJ more than G in this one but each had their moments and the spot next to Cale Makar turning into a revolving door, this group is really struggling right now. It can’t be much longer until Conor Timmins gets the call to come and try to help. It just can’t go on.
• I’ve always been impressed by oddsmakers but this one is an all-timer in my books. Before the season, one betting site placed an over/under on how many games Nichushkin’s goalless streak would last. It was placed at 92.5 games. Tonight, in game 92, Nichushkin ended the streak. Incredible, both for Nichushkin and for oddsmakers.
• Two final notes from here tonight: Avs could use more from J.T. Compher. He’s not been bad but he hasn’t really stepped up into the many voids on the roster. He just keeps being who he is, and that’s a net-positive player most nights, but it’s tough to see him just…not step into a void the way Burakovsky/Donskoi have. Lastly, just an appreciation for the way Matt Nieto thinks a game. If you ever watch him closely for a game, especially live when you see the way he moves around the ice without the puck, he is a joy to watch. Very intelligent.