Avalanche pull another rabbit out of a hat in comeback win over Boston

You remember in that movie “The Prestige” where two magicians are having an epic battle to see how they can one-up each other and one of them comes up with a trick the other simply can’t explain and it turns out to be something truly dark and twisted that pushed the one magician ahead of the other?

That’s what this Avalanche group feels like, except they’re the only magician involved here. They just keep pushing their limits of what they’re capable of and then finding their way to greater heights, capped by tonight’s 4-3 overtime victory.

Down 3-1 to the Boston Bruins, a team that had won 10 of their last 13 games coming into tonight, and with no Nathan MacKinnon and rolling essentially four defensemen?

No problem.

You can pretty easily make the argument that tonight was a good example of how games typically go how the Avs go despite another NHL team on the ice at the same time. Colorado’s self-destruction in the second period led to three consecutive Bruins goals to erase all the good feelings from Kurtis MacDermid’s first goal of the season that had put them up 1-0.

After getting down by two goals, however, the Avs seemed to re-focus on the task at hand and remember they were playing for two points, not just to try to hurt Taylor Hall after his questionable hit on MacKinnon in the first period led to MacKinnon leaving the rest of the game.

The attention paid to Hall was appropriate; Colorado as a team has made an active and outward attempt to not allow liberties to be taken with their players this season. As captain, Gabe Landeskog engaged Hall multiple times and tried to get him to answer the bell for the hit.

Hall declined, once again showing that Taylor Hall is all about making good business decisions for Taylor Hall.

Now, I’m not going to sit here and heap praise on the Avs for letting Hall’s hit get in their heads and take them out of their game, but it’s absolutely noteworthy to see the team come together over the common cause of sticking up for arguably their best player.

It was something you questioned about last year’s group and we’ve seen them consistently just not be about that life so far this year. Another example of that “togetherness” is the way the club reacted when MacDermid scored. It’s obvious he’s extremely well-liked and a team that plays for each other is a team you have to watch out for.

Once they shook the Hall cobwebs out, they spent the entire third period leaning on the Bruins. The Avs outshot Boston 18-7, had a 14-5 advantage in scoring chances and 6-3 in high-danger chances and even hit a couple of posts along the way because nothing is ever easy.

Or is it?

When a team just decides it is fundamentally against losing and then lives that life? It’s pretty impressive to watch.

The Avs got a lucky goal from Sam Girard to really take their onslaught up a notch and get the crowd back into believing this winning streak was not ending. When Gabe Landeskog tied it, you could’ve put the two points in the win column right then. There was no way this team was losing this game at that point.

They didn’t, and now we get to talk not about how tonight was a loss that could get the Avs back to a simpler game. Instead, we get to talk about the dominance of a team that could be on its way to a special regular season.

With 63 points through 41 games (good for first in the NHL, by the way), the Avs are staring down the barrel of not having to do too much to get into the postseason from here.

The baseline for the playoffs in an 82-game season is usually right around the 95-point mark. That gives the Avs 41 games to get the 32 points necessary just to qualify for the dance. Obviously, Colorado’s aspirations are beyond simply making the playoffs, but it is an important step that still has to be accomplished before they can do anything else.

With a 17-game winning streak in their own barn, the goal can shift to trying to secure home ice. Making everyone out west come through the hellscape that has become Ball Arena positions the Avalanche to make a deep run.

All of that is great. All of that is also for tomorrow.

Right now, they’re worried about getting on an airplane to Chicago tomorrow and trying to find a way to win without their star center.

This has become the kind of team I’m not going to doubt can figure that out. Magicians have that knack, after all.

TAKEAWAYS

• I’ll leave a lot of the nitty gritty for Evan in his grades piece, but I did want to talk about the Hall hit. I compared it to the Kadri hit on Justin Faulk and I think it still applies. The only real difference here is (and it’s meaningful) MacKinnon’s stick is what hits MacKinnon in the face and does the physical damage. That said, if you watch the replay, it sure looks like the shoulder was ticketed for MacKinnon’s chin before the stick got there first. We’ll never know, for sure, and I’m not advocating for further punishment on Hall, just that I’m not so quick to absolve him from blame for the kind of problematic blindside hit that the league has worked so hard to remove from the game.
• Just a quick shoutout to Darcy Kuemper, who I thought was great in this game.