Avs-Canucks Game 18 Studs & Duds

Studs

Cale Makar

The run-up to the game featured a lot of attention on Makar versus Quinn Hughes, Vancouver’s star defenseman who is off to an unreal start with 31 points so far this season. In the game itself, both players had their moments as Hughes was solid against Colorado’s best players but tore up the depth guys.

On the flip side, Makar was fine against Vancouver’s best players and absolutely shredded the depth guys. Each had an assist through two periods when the game was tied 2-2.

Makar really separated himself when the Avs had a 3-2 lead and the Canucks had spent several minutes applying pressure. J.T. Miller got a little too cute high in the offensive zone and Makar switched gears from defending to hunting mode and he attacked, stealing the puck and beating Thatcher Demko on a breakaway to essentially ice the game at 4-2.

That’s the kind of thing that’s a little more normal than what happened at the end of the Nashville game. Welcome back, superstar.

Jonathan Drouin

This is much more of what we’ve been waiting to see from Drouin. His assist on the power play isn’t really much of him doing anything more than making the right play but there’s always value in good decision-making with the puck.

I loved the goal, though. He’s not going to fight for position in front of the opposing net because he knows it isn’t going to go well for him, so he has to find other ways to be part of the fray. He’s reading the play the entire way and making small adjustments in his positioning.

When the puck makes its way back out high, he darts back to the front of the net and gets a stick on the Makar shot. He gets a piece of it and it goes in. It’s smart, effective hockey where a player understands his limitations and how to work within them.

For my money, Drouin has been more effective than his production would suggest this season but no amount of underlying numbers and good vibes can outlast the need for raw production. A two-point night for Drouin does a lot to help him climb that mountain and prove he deserves a job somewhere in this forward corps. He needs one of those stretches with five points in five games or something.

Alexandar Georgiev

The second Canucks goal is a bad one and there isn’t really any getting around that. It should not go in.

Okay, that said, Georgiev was a major reason the Avalanche won this game tonight. He made a number of huge saves with the Canucks on the doorstep banging away at pucks. He didn’t budge and kept things under control.

Consistently successful goalies aren’t that way because they are all about highlight-reel saves, but because they read plays and ace positioning and don’t give shooters much to shoot at. When the Canucks shooters did have something to go at tonight, Georgiev had answers.

It’s a real game of inches because a couple of his saves were just barely getting a piece of pucks, but that’s versus not getting a piece at all and giving up goals. Vancouver scored two goals tonight. If Georgiev holds teams to only two goals every night the rest of the way, the Avalanche will win most of them. This was a performance both he and Colorado really needed.

Another strong third period

The fiasco against Nashville remains a blight on Colorado’s otherwise excellent record in third periods this season, but tonight was a return to form for the Avalanche.

They entered in a tie game and it took only 1:24 for the Avs to grab the lead when Riley Tufte’s leg deflected a puck into the net. It was a weird play in front but Tufte did what he had to do battling for position and got the bounce.

A good break for the Avs, but one of those “you put yourself into good situations, eventually good things happen to you” kind of deals.

After that, the Avs kept the pressure on until Vancouver finally responded with a push of their own. Colorado tried and tried to get that insurance goal but couldn’t until Makar’s brilliance rose to the occasion.

Even at 4-2, the Avs didn’t give the Canucks much of anything as they pulled the goaltender with over three minutes to play. Mikko Rantanen scored into the empty net shortly after and the game was over. The Avs might have given up more shots in the third period but won the scoring chances battles 11-8 and high-danger chances 5-4.

Tidy piece of business from Colorado.

Duds

Discipline

I keep writing about this because the Avalanche keep failing this test. Tonight was a little better as they took zero penalties in the first and third periods, but my goodness did they ever try to throw the game away in the second period.

Holding a 2-1 lead walking in, the Avalanche took three consecutive penalties, starting with Mikko Rantanen’s Tripping and Bowen Byram put them on a 5v3 as he took a Delay of Game near the end of Rantanen’s hockey crime time.

The Avs killed all of that off, then Valeri Nichushkin tripped Demko and went right back to the box after just 30 seconds of 5v5 time.

The Avs killed nearly killed that off, too, but then things got wild.

Josh Manson and Brock Boeser exchanged cross-checks in front of Georgiev and Boeser went down. The whistle blew and the referee signaled for both players to go off. The call was initially Manson for four minutes and Boeser for two, but it was reviewed and determined Manson would be getting a five-minute major and ejected.

To say there was disagreement with that call would be appropriate.

The Avs caught a pretty significant break when Vancouver took two penalties during Manson’s penalty, but everything before the call on Manson was self-inflicted nonsense and could have cost them the game, especially against a team with an insanely productive power play such as Vancouver’s.

That kind of self-defeating tendency has crept into Colorado’s game a bit too much this season in the form of a penalty parade. This is not how you go about business.

Unsung Hero

Riley Tufte

Look, he played his role and used his gigantic 6’6″ frame to carve out a position in front of the Vancouver net. If he consistently did that, Dallas never would have let him leave. Instead, it appears the Avalanche might be on the receiving end of Tufte really figuring it out as a pro as he is one of the AHL’s leading scorers and has shown well in his turns in an Avalanche sweater.

Getting the game-winning goal doing the dirty work is a reward for a player who needs to be reminded occasionally that the dirty work is how a player such as him is going to succeed.

His line with Miles Wood and Ross Colton got carved up as a trio in every area but goals scored and it ended up being the game-winning goal. Sometimes that’s all you need.