Avalanche look to capture Pepsi Center magic down the stretch

This time of year is always defined by rampant scoreboard-watching. The Avalanche are keeping their eyes on the likes of Minnesota, Dallas, Arizona, and Chicago as their competition for the wild card spots in the postseason. Given the disappointing results of last night where Minnesota scored twice in the final two minutes of regulation to steal two points from Winnipeg, tonight’s contest against the Canucks slides as close to “must-win” territory as it gets without actually being a literal must-win.

“We know that we can’t rely on other teams,” Erik Johnson said in driving home the point that rely on other teams to lose is bad business this time of year. “It’s up to us. It would be nice to split some of those overtime games in half and get four, five or six points and we’d be in a different spot. We have a lot more games at home than on the road so we’ve got to make sure we’re taking care of home ice. We’re right in the thick of it. If we take care of our business, we’ll be where we want to be.”

Where the Avalanche differs in their stretch-run this year versus last season is Colorado has already played the bulk of its road schedule. With just eight of their 19 games remaining, Colorado should enjoy some home cooking as they seek consecutive postseason berths for the first time in eons.

After enjoying a 28-win season at Pepsi Center last year, however, the Avalanche have won just 12 of 30 home games.

“I think it just kind of has ebbs and flows over the years,” Johnson said. “We’ve had stretches where we’ve been really good at home and not so good on the road. It’s kind of a luck thing or what have you. For whatever reason, we’ve been better on the road. We’ve got to make this a tough place to play at altitude. Teams definitely feel it when they come here. For us, it’s just a matter of taking care of our own destiny, winning our games at home. We’ll be sitting okay if we do that.”

One of the reasons for optimism down the stretch has been the resurgent play of Semyon Varlamov, who found his game enough to win the NHL’s First Star of the Week honor last week. While that’s all good and well, Varlamov was just okay in Monday’s OT loss to the Florida Panthers as goals three and four were pretty weak overall. From his longtime teammate’s perspective, though, there isn’t a cause for concern.

“[Varly has] always been one of the harder working goalies,” Johnson said. “He works hard every day. Before practice starts, he’s probably out there for 30 minutes with [goaltending coach Jussi Parkkila]. He works on his game and that’s part of what’s made him so good when he’s on. He’s pretty technical and he relies on his work ethic and he deserves what he’s doing right now. Even when he was going through his rough stretch, he was putting the hours in and the work in. It’s good to see him get rewarded for that.”

When asked to examine what went wrong earlier in the year, Johnson was like the rest of us when he couldn’t do more than just shrug.

“I think you just look at the history of certain goalies,” he said. “It was just kind of a random rough path. He’s been a pretty consistent goalie for us over the years ever since I played with him since 2011. We knew it was just a matter of time before he kind of got out of it.”

The other disappointment from Monday’s game was Colorado dropping its 12th game after regulation and 11th in overtime. Their only win came in Anaheim with just seconds remaining on the clock.

Has the overtime hurdle become a legitimate mental block?

“I don’t really think from my perspective we think about it too much,” Johnson said. “You have to have a short memory in this league no matter good or bad. We’re aware of our record but I don’t think when overtime starts we’re thinking ‘we don’t have a shot to win’ or ‘here we go again’.

So, in his eyes, what is he seeing go wrong?

“I think we cheat a little bit on the offensive side of the puck,” Johnson explained. “If you kind of treat three on three less like pond hockey and more like a regular game, I think we maybe would be in a little different position. I think we think offense too much and you have to be just as committed defensively three on three as offensively or you’re going to get burned like we have. The other thing, it’s three on three. You’re going to give up some chances. I mean, you’re going to get a guy caught low and give up some odd-mans. That’s just the nature of the beast in three on three. For us, I think we can be a little more committed defensively in that regard on the three on three side. The other thing is there’s two forwards out there and one D. Forwards aren’t necessarily thinking ‘I’ve got to defend.’ So that’s another thing where you’ve got a D that’s more offensive-minded who is thinking offense. I think our mentality now has to be ‘This hasn’t been working for however many months so let’s try and defend and see where it takes us, think defense-first in the overtime and not shoot the puck.”

Given Colorado’s top-heavy roster construction, it’s really been mystifying the Avalanche have struggled the way they have with the format. With Nathan MacKinnon, especially, you’ think Colorado was set up better than most teams. Instead, they lead the league with 12 OTLs. Nobody else even has 10.

“For whatever reason, we’re a pretty skilled team up and down the lineup,” Johnson said. “You’d think we’d be pretty good at three on three. Hopefully, we can figure it out. Hopefully, we can figure it out and take care of games before it gets to that point.

Sometimes all it takes is one. We’ll see.”

Lineup Notes

Colin Wilson returns from another injury and will slot back into the Avalanche lineup. The lines for tonight will be:

Kerfoot MacKinnon Rantanen
Landeskog Jost Calvert
Brassard Soderberg Compher
Andrighetto Dries Wilson
Girard Johnson
Graves Barrie
Zadorov Nemeth
Varlamov