The Colorado Avalanche dropped a 4-3 decision to the New Jersey Devils that was nowhere near as close as the final score looks. These were the Avs studs and duds.

Studs

Was there anyone?

I wanted to give love to Artturi Lehkonen for his two-goal performance, but both goals came after the Devils had made it 4-1 and effectively ended the game. His second goal came with a mere three seconds remaining on the clock. I wanted to give him credit, but the more I sat with it, I just don’t want to give the Avs any love for this pathetic two-game road trip, so I’m not going to.

Duds

Nathan MacKinnon

He has to be sick, right? He looks slow, tired, and completely disengaged from the competitive parts of the game. Those are all things that aren’t normal for him. The disengaged part is more of a moving target, but even at his worst, MacKinnon never looks like this.

Look, when a superstar plays so poorly as MacKinnon did over the two-game trip out East, it’s natural we speculate about an injury or that something is wrong. But really, this looked like a completely foreign entity had stolen all of the things that make MacKinnon great. In essence, he got “Monstar’d”, like the NBA All-Stars from Space Jam.

Instead of taking over the game in key moments when the Avs were desperate for it, MacKinnon was firing shot passes near the net because he was in need of someone else to make the big play. Does that seem like the real MacKinnon? It’s purely speculative on my part, but he played like a guy who was legitimately sick, in the literal sense, not the internet cool points kind of way.

Maybe he isn’t, and it’s just a preview of what’s to come as his aging curve really sets in, but it feels more likely to me that he was just under the weather for a back-to-back where he didn’t have time to recover.

Add in the reality that the Avs are already playing with 11 forwards and 7 defensemen and don’t have the salary-cap space to call up someone to let a guy have a night off when he’s battling the internal elements, and it’s a perfect storm of problems to watch Colorado’s best player inexplicably go to pieces two straight games.

Of course, he could just have played poorly with no caveats. That’s absolutely possible.

Let’s go with everyone else

Halfway through the game, the Avs had five shots on goal. I don’t care where they finished; this team simply isn’t good enough (especially with this version of MacKinnon) to play half of a game and think they’re going to be able to pull two points.

They couldn’t do it against the worst team in the league in the Philadelphia Flyers and they certainly weren’t going to pull it off against an actually good team such as the Devils.

This was their third straight game with a complete dud of a first period that left them chasing the pace of play. They were lucky to be tied after the opening frame, a scoreline they were absolutely undeserving of. It was nothing short of an abysmal performance from the entire team of skaters.

Could it be the constant 11/7 causing chemistry problems all over? You could make a solid argument that that’s the case. You could also make the argument that the coaching staff got too cute in this one, running out a completely revamped lineup, top to bottom, that made little sense and produced horrible results.

The Avs started finding their game when they reverted back to the lines that had been winning them games, so let’s throw the coaching staff into this bundle of bad. It all felt so messy and dumb.

Avs Unsung Hero

Scott Wedgewood

This guy showed up and played his heart out. He’s such an active goaltender that he’s always a fun watch, but with him under siege for much of the game, he was overtaxed a bit and got unlucky along the way when the second goal deflected in off of Brock Nelson.

It was a beast of a game from him. The only thing I’d ask to be a little different is: can he stop a breakaway? Anecdotally, it feels like he just can’t handle the situation, but maybe those feelings are heavily driven by his poor track record in shootouts.

Anyway, Wedgewood was Colorado’s best player on a night where he needed to be a 10 instead of a 9.5 to drag his team across the finish line. Yet again, hockey is unfair.