Avs-Islanders Game 3 Studs & Duds

The Colorado Avalanche lost 6-2 to the New York Islanders in their third game of the season. These are the Avs Studs & Duds from the game.

Studs

Cal Ritchie

There are two ways to get automatically put into “Studs” after a game: Score your first NHL goal or record a hat trick.

Ritchie did the first on a great play that he started with a perfect reload. After taking the puck back from the Isles, he went hard to the net and Josh Manson found him for an eaaaaaasy tap-in goal. It was awesome for Ritchie and you could see his confidence rise after that goal.

The big smile on Ritchie’s face on the bench after was heartwarming and a delight to all.

Nathan MacKinnon

I’ll get to the big guns on the whole here in a bit, but MacKinnon was engaged and flying around most of the game. It’s silly that that’s considered something good because that’s, you know, his job, but that was the kind of night it was.

His pass to Casey Mittelstadt was nasty and emblematic of his playmaking already being back to rad as hell so far this season.

Duds

The stars

I’m going to single out the second period here because that was the worst of it, but there was plenty to dislike from Mikko Rantanen and Cale Makar in particular.

Rantanen’s taste for laziness showed up again as he never really got his game geared up. He just wasn’t engaged throughout the game and it was so bad, it resulted in head coach Jared Bednar pulling him (and the rest of the top PP unit) off the ice during Colorado’s first power play. He got back out there, of course, but it was some kind of a message.

I’d like to see Bednar utilize the benching method a bit more in games where his team is getting worked like this. I think sometimes the stars on this team have gotten away from the accountability that marked their rise to stardom because they have become so accomplished. Nobody embodies that more than Rantanen.

Makar, well, it was at times lazy and brutally bad. It was just a terrible game for him overall. These games happen and when they do they are incredibly frustrating to watch, but when the team is missing as much talent as they are (no Toews, Lehkonen, Drouin, Nichushkin, or Landeskog), these guys just can’t have off nights.

Goaltending

This was easily the least amount you can blame on Alexandar Georgiev as the team in front of him put him in some terrible spots, but Georgiev allowed five more goals. Am I to believe the guy is just the unluckiest goalie in the world? Please.

Georgiev wasn’t good again tonight and my frustration was similar to last year – once he had allowed three, he started to lock it down and play a little better. That puts an enormous amount of pressure on the team in front of him. They got an early lead and it was wasted when Georgiev failed to seal his post and left an easy rebound for Anders Lee to make it 1-1 and take the momentum back for the Isles.

Defense

Name a defenseman, and there was a brutal sequence at some point for them tonight. Oliver Kylington was awful pretty much all game, Makar we’ve talked about, Manson had a nice pass to Ritchie and then was bad the rest of the night, Girard had multiple defensive breakdowns, and Sam Malinski had one turnover in particular that made me say, “Oh man.” The other new guy, John Ludvig, had me thinking he was Jack Johnson for a minute with the way he went through one sequence in the neutral zone.

The team defense was terrible, too. They allowed approximately 32458973945734 high-danger chances, so only allowing six goals was okay work. They played disconnected hockey throughout the game and looked like a team that had no interest in putting in the work to play strong defensive hockey.

A lot of defense is just effort and commitment. The Avs had next to none of that tonight and they earned this result.

Avs Unsung Hero

Casey Mittelstadt, I guess?

I’ll say that I don’t think Mittelstadt was good tonight. He blew some defensive zone coverages that were critically bad and he is incapable of driving a line as a high-impact player. That’s a problem itself, but one the Avs at least knew they had coming in.

He did, however, score another goal. That gives him three goals in three games to start the season, which is pretty cool. It really does seem as if the Avs have a legitimate #2 center again. It’s not hard to dream on a world where the missing wings come back and provide a little more help.