The Colorado Avalanche finally accomplished something today that they had not done since 2025 began – win two straight games. A 2-0 shutout over the Philadelphia Flyers in a matinee match coupled with the 5-0 beatdown they laid on the St. Louis Blues on Friday night gives the Avs four out of four possible points on this two-game homestand.

This one started off slowly for the Avalanche as they were getting outshot 9-1 in the first half of the game, but slowly worked their way into the game. As they did, the Flyers undermanned lineup began drifting away from competitiveness.

Colorado eventually got on the board in the second period with a Sam Girard goal in transition (?) and then followed it up with a Nathan MacKinnon power-play marker. That two-goal lead held up through the rest of the game as Girard’s buzzer-beating empty-net goal missed counting by mere hundredths of a second.

It was an unexciting but methodical win for the Avalanche, so let’s talk about it.

Mackenzie Blackwood, back to work

Before his shutout of the Blues on Friday, Blackwood was experiencing the regression to the mean we were expecting after his superhuman start in an Avalanche uniform. Over his last five starts, Blackwood had gone 1-3-1 with a .874 save percentage, well below .938 mark he posted in is first 12 starts with Colorado.

A 19-save shutout isn’t one he will put on his career highlight, but 24 more saves today puts him at a perfect 43 saves on 43 shots over this weekend. That’s as good of a response as you could possibly ask for from a goaltender. Literally, he could not have done any better.

It was another game where Blackwood showed that when he’s at his best, he’s playing a quiet game. He’s not a guy who gets wild back there and relies on his athleticism to save the day. He utilizes his enormous frame to do most of the heavy lifting and then goes from there.

It was a clean performance from Blackwood today as he didn’t create any additional problems for himself and played behind an Avalanche defense that ate up a Flyers forward corps reeling from a big trade last week that has resulted in visa issues delaying their new players from getting into the lineup yet.

Blackwood and the Avs took advantage of the opportunity and won a sleepy game.

Lineup balance again helps Avs

We’re at the point where I’m not sure Avalanche head coach Jared Bednar can even help himself anymore with the Nathan MacKinnon usage. We’ve watched him reel himself in with how much he uses Devon Toews and Cale Makar, but things have not changed since swapping out Mikko Rantanen for Martin Necas on the top line.

Artturi Lehkonen was the low man in ice time for Colorado’s top line and he played 22:23, which was more than Sam Girard and Josh Manson on the Avs’ second defensive pairing. Bednar just cannot seem to help it.

Of course, can you blame him when the line has a 22-11 advantage in shot attempts at 5v5? Or when they produce 13 scoring chances and six high-danger chances versus just five and three allowed, respectively?

The rest of the lines, though, were all remarkably close in ice time. Colorado’s fourth-most used forward was Jonathan Drouin at 14:11 and the least-used was Juuso Parssinen at 10:22.

Each of the lines played at least 7:19 together at 5v5. I’d really like to see MacKinnon’s line get about a two minute reduction and those minutes go to Casey Mittelstadt’s line, which had yet another strong game together, but the way this lineup is operating from top to bottom is really encouraging right now.

The forward lineup being this close to fully healthy has had a transformative effect on how they defend as a team. Only MacKinnon’s line is truly dominating, but no line is killing them and all of them have enough trust from Bednar to get into the action every game.

Colorado only allowed 21 shots on goal, 16 scoring chances, and nine high-danger chances at 5v5. That’s another strong defensive effort, continuing what we’ve seen from them over the last few weeks. The offense is still finding its extra gear, but the team defense appears to be settling in nicely.

Nathan MacKinnon, power-play goal scorer

I went on the PDOCast with Dimitri Filipovic a few weeks ago with old friend Meghan Angley to talk about the Avalanche and some of their curious struggles this year. Part of that conversation included us talking about the struggles of Colorado’s power play. I’ve said for a while that MacKinnon needed to shoot more, especially on the man advantage.

He shot it today and smoked a puck past Sam Ersson for his first power-play goal since October 28 against the Chicago Blackhawks. It’s tough to put a ding in the profile of the player who has been leading the league in scoring for multiple months, but this has stood out as a problem.

The player who has dominated the NHL’s shot board over the last handful of years has gotten a little more discerning with his shooting and the most noticeable change has been on the power play.

I’m hopeful that getting one today will inspire him to get back to being a bit more multi-faceted on the power play because that will really open up the ice and help the Avalanche power play get back to its more prolific habits.

This was another strong effort from him and his line, but adding that little wrinkle will really help his game round into a more fully-formed monster.