Overtime foils Avs again as Flames end six-game winning streak

Every time a winning streak gets past about five games, you start wondering when it’s going to end. Could they do something historic and it last for weeks? Will it end tomorrow? Who will be the team to put their foot down on a supremely confident club?

That answer came tonight when the Calgary Flames ended multiple six-game winning streaks in a 5-4 OT win over the Avalanche.

Colorado had won six straight overall and six straight against the Flames dating back to their postseason series last year but the Flames clawed their way to two points tonight.

The Avs, still beset by injuries, managed to do their level best to make it seven in a row but it just wasn’t in the cards tonight.

Pavel Francouz was starting in net while Philipp Grubauer continued to nurse a lower-body injury and Cale Makar missed his first game of the season. As Colorado has gotten most of their forwards back, the defense has begun taking hits.

Colorado has certainly done more than simply weather the storm as they’ve thrived in the face of seemingly endless injury adversity but tonight they simply succumbed to the hungrier team.

Despite having leads of 1-0 and 2-1, the Avs were unable to hold Calgary off and things flipped dramatically early in the third period when, after entering tied 2-2, the Flames made it 4-2 in the first 1:39.

Colorado responded. Well, Nathan MacKinnon responded. He scored on a long clear from Ian Cole (that was tipped by Matt Calvert) and then found Joonas Donskoi who took advantage of poor goaltending by Dave Rittich to tie it up.

It was a fun and intense third period between two teams who clearly aren’t fans of each other but the Flames ultimately worked their way to the extra point.

Each team had chances in overtime but Sean Monahan ended up with the game-winning goal.

The loss still moved the Avs to within one point of the St. Louis Blues for the top seed in the western conference.

GAME TAKEAWAYS

• Every game has a player matchup that has the potential to change the game depending on the outcome. With the Flames and Avs, things like Tkachuk-Zadorov, MacKinnon-Giordano, Gaudreau versus his mortality, Backlund-Grubauer’s left leg, all stick out as potential keys to the game coming in. Tonight, we got a dose of Tkachuk-Zadorov as they got into a heated discussion in the third period and the ensuing possession resulted in a dumped puck into the Colorado end. Zadorov and Tkachuk were, naturally, the players in the puck battle and Tkachuk tried his hardest to lay a big hit on Zadorov. Big Z absorbed the contact and ended up standing over Tkachuk, and putting his hands in the air as if to say “I’m not trying to keep him from getting up but I’m definitely not in a hurry to move because he’s my pet now.” Pretty entertaining little sequence.
• The Giordano matchup ended up being the difference in the game here as Giordano shut down MacKinnon in overtime and keyed the breakaway the other direction when he swatted the puck from MacKinnon. Burakovsky wasn’t quite able to get back and prevent Monahan from getting the clean look and Francouz was unable to bail the Avs out.
• Bednar tried something a little different at the start of OT there. We’ve mentioned in this space before the concept of putting Nazem Kadri out there to take the faceoff and then hop off the ice. The Avs tried that tonight except with Kadri out, Pierre-Edouard Bellemare was their top FO guy. Naturally, he lost it but nothing ended up happening with him out there. I was a little surprised he stayed on the ice after the Avs got possession of the puck and he tried to be part of the offense. It just seemed odd for a guy with two points since Nov. 1 to stay out there on offense in OT. I get why they tried it but it could use some tweaking in the future.
• Loss of Cale Makar and Erik Johnson has exposed a defense that only has so much raw puck-moving ability. Outside of Sam Girard (more on him below), there isn’t really a natural puck-moving guy. Both Mark Barberio and Calle Rosen did so at high levels in the AHL but Barberio has proven himself as more of a safe decision-maker in the NHL. Rosen is still finding himself in the NHL and it showed at various points tonight.
• Girard had some issues moving the puck tonight but he also had a ton of puck touches. I mean a ton. Almost every time he was on the ice, they were relying on him solely to be the breakout and his skill in skating pucks out gave the forwards confidence to fly the zone a little quicker than they might with someone else back there. Girard is one of the league’s best at skating pucks out of danger but we’ve seen this year he can be pressured into mistakes. With no Makar, the workload was amped up quite a bit on Girard and I think that amplified some of the mistakes. He definitely needs to clean some of that up, though, because there were just too many unforced errors.
• In the constant state of comparing this year’s team to previous iterations, this was definitely a game they would have lost in regulation last year. The early third period meltdown would have spiraled into a missed opportunity. This ended up being a missed opportunity anyway because OT is a coin flip but the point is fine.
• Nathan MacKinnon is an extremely special player and all of us are fortunate to watch him play every night. He is an animal.
• On a similar note, we were treated to what life was like before Cale Makar parachuted in and Avalanche hockey isn’t quite as much fun without him. It didn’t sound like we should plan to see him this week but it was possible. Avs definitely need Kadri back, though.