Good vibes alone won't win games for the Avalanche

Going into last night’s game, the vibes were about as good as they have been all season for the Colorado Avalanche. Both Ross Colton and Jared Bednar talked about those vibes heading into last night. The feeling around the club was refreshed.

Then they took the ice, never got geared up, and dropped a 4-1 decision to the Utah Hockey Club. It’s a deceiving scoreline for how the game played out, but the momentum built off of their five-game road trip was (hopefully temporarily) halted.

Let’s talk about how it went down.

Avs on the wrong end of the bounces

Talking about “luck” in hockey is always tricky territory because it’s like if we admit that a team got lucky/unlucky somewhere along the way, it ignores the rest of the process that went into the game unfolding the way it did.

Last night’s game was a good example of how a game can change because one team gets the breaks and the other gets the screws.

Utah’s first goal was a puck thrown into the middle of the ice by Dylan Guenther (who scored twice in this game) and it clipped Cale Makar’s stick before hitting Artturi Lehkonen’s skate and popping up and over Scott Wedgewood’s shoulder. If comedy is art, this was it.

Their second goal was a little more classic hockey bad luck, but bad luck all the same. A relatively innocuous point shot from Vladislav Kolyachonok hit Casey Mittelstadt’s stick and then deflected off Calvin de Haan’s shin pad and changed direction, making Wedgewood unable to react to it in time.

Utah was up 2-0 on some schoolyard nonsense. That’s how hockey goes sometimes. It wasn’t as if Utah was thoroughly outplaying the Avalanche; they weren’t. They got the breaks. In reality, this was a 50-50 game throughout as both teams struggled to generate quality offense, but the game-changing plays were ones that occasionally happen.

If the Avs were on the other side of this, I would be talking about how the Avs got lucky. The thing about luck, though, is that for it to exist, it requires misfortune somewhere to balance out the good fortune created. Last night, the Avs got the bad luck portion.

Karel Vejmelka was also awesome

Once the Avs got down, eventually trailing 3-0 after a beautiful power-play goal built on precision passing ripped the Avalanche penalty kill to shreds, they started to push offensively.

They struggled to create high-danger chances, but Utah goaltender Karel Vejmelka was there time and time again. He stepped up and shut down any realistic hopes for a comeback as he surrendered only a late goal to Nathan MacKinnon that ended his bid for a shutout but nothing more.

The Avalanche attack was not overwhelming. They created only four high-danger chances at 5v5 and only five in all situations. They did generate 33 scoring chances (all situations) but they missed the net a lot and Utah was good at blocking shots (they finished 23 of them).

Too many plays died before ever getting to Vejmelka, but when they did, he was awesome. In my eyes, he was the star of the game.

Avalanche special teams continue to struggle

Colorado’s power play has been in free fall for a few weeks now. Since November 5, the Avs are 26th with a power play that has succeeded only 17% of the time.

Last night, the Avs had chances to get back into the game with the man advantage as they had a power play 3:54 into the second period. They didn’t score, but at least that attempt was one rife with opportunities. They generated four shots on goal, three scoring chances, and one high-danger chance. All they were missing was a goal.

They had 2:43 of power-play time in the third period carried over from the second period and they didn’t get a single shot on goal. They had two scoring chances and Ross Colton hit the post on a broken play, but that was it. The score was 3-0 by that point so maybe it wouldn’t have mattered, but it’s pretty frustrating that this unit cannot seem to find the net.

On the other end is the penalty kill, which has outperformed the power play since November 5 (which is the one-month mark of the NHL season and why I’m using it). It still hasn’t been good enough, however, with only a 78% success rate, good for 18th in that time.

Down 2-0 last night, Colorado’s penalty kill held up for all of seven seconds. That’s not good enough!