Avalanche losing streak reaches season-high three after falling to Vegas

Following two straight losses in St. Louis to the suddenly-surging Blues, Colorado rolled into Vegas to take on the Golden Knights in a matchup anticipated by everyone.

These are two teams everyone views as Stanley Cup contenders and the two likeliest teams to come out of the West Division in the postseason. With Vegas four points up on Colorado in the standings, it was a chance for Colorado to make it close or Vegas to put some serious separation.

In a 5-2 win, Vegas showed themselves to be clearly the better team on this night. A playoff preview? Hardly. But for a regular season game, Vegas can feel good about their ability to beat Devan Dubnyk, who was abysmal once again, and take advantage of Colorado miscues, of which there were plenty.

Now, the Avs played quite a bit better than they did in St. Louis two days ago, but the end result isn’t any different so it’s not much of a consolation prize.

Vegas scored 10 seconds into the game, their fastest goal in franchise history, and then scored on their shots of both periods two and three.

Now, their first shot in period two came 9:36 into the frame and on the power play. That made it 2-1 at the time and then Mark Stone scored a few minutes later by banking a puck off Dubnyk’s back to make it 3-1. Yes, I’m serious.

A Ryan Graves goal late in the period at least made it close for a few minutes but Max Pacioretty getting his second goal of the night 55 seconds into the third period made it 4-2 and essentially put the game away. There was an empty-net goal, too, which is how we landed on 5-2.

For whatever reason, Colorado continues to be a team that cannot mount a comeback in the third period. I don’t know what the deal is but they moved to 0-8-0 on the year when entering third periods trailing. The upside is they’ve only entered the third period trailing eight times. But to pull zero points from those situations?

There’s no way to dress that up to be okay. It’s been a common thread under Jared Bednar the last five years and has continued so far. I don’t have any kind of solutions to offer up, just pointing out something that has been going on for several years.

Colorado is now on their first three-game losing streak of the season but will have plenty of opportunities to get right.

The Avs finally get to head home this week as they take on San Jose on Friday and Saturday and expectations are, at least right now, that all of Mikko Rantanen, Joonas Donskoi and Philipp Grubauer will return for one of those games.

After tonight, Colorado’s schedule is eight games against San Jose and Los Angeles and one last hurrah against Vegas to determine the winner of the season series.

TAKEAWAYS

• Sometimes you get what you pay for, right? Devan Dubnyk had a couple of acceptable starts to begin his Colorado career but tonight was atrocious. The second goal, despite much speculation to the contrary, was not tipped by Devon Toews. Dubnyk just didn’t react to it. Looking back on it, none of the four goals scored by Vegas were any good. The fourth was a two-on-one and would normally not be notable from a goalie perspective but that Dubnyk was so far out of the net and not even close to being competitive on the shot seems notable on a night where he was otherwise downright awful. I mean awful.
• This wasn’t the main problem tonight and we generally make way too much of it but the fourth line was a total disaster. Both Martin Kaut and Liam O’Brien had disastrous sequences with and without the puck with O’Brien taking another penalty. Kaut actually saw ice time on the 6-on-5 but the two of them were total anchors tonight. They both finished with 0% CF and made strong cases for not sticking in the lineup.
• Ryan Graves and Cale Makar had a much stronger effort after a tough couple of games against the Blues. Those guys had eye-popping numbers with Graves finishing with 27 shots attempts for and just three against at 5v5. The Avs had a 17-2 advantage in scoring chances with Graves out there (14-5 with Makar). That’s a nice way to respond.
• From a purely numbers standpoint, Kiefer Sherwood’s box score contributions were insane. 17 Corsi For, just 7 Corsi Against at even strength and then he added four shots on goal and eight (????) hits. I don’t have many thoughts on his actual play but wow.
• Nazem Kadri. Some big mistakes tonight but I thought there were a lot more positives to pull from this game than we’ve previously seen. I think he’s getting there. I don’t know how much longer the staff will want to continue tailoring things to try to kickstart him specifically but I thought putting the hivemind of Nichushkin and Jost next to him did help out. It was a tough assignment tonight as they drew the Mark Stone matchup and that might have taken some wind out of the sails of Bednar’s plan to help Kadri get going. He drew two penalties and actually helped create some quality chances for teammates, something he’s not done a lot of recently. He also got stopped by Fleury on a nice scoring chance for himself, something he has done quite a bit of recently. So, a mixed evening for him overall. Certainly not good enough for the postseason and absolutely not what the Avalanche are expecting from him but I’ve got a good feeling about him this weekend finally busting this slump.