Avalanche revisit familiar follies in falling to Jets

You know when you’re having one of those days where you oversleep your alarm, then get out of bed and stub your toe on the door on your way to the bathroom and then take a shower and find out your roommates used all the hot water and you’re just incredibly over that particular day even though you’ve not been awake for an hour yet?

That was the Avalanche in December.

But you put your head down and try to get through that fiasco of a morning and look for the positives along the way. You find a quarter on the sidewalk, heads up even, on your walk into work. You have an actual enjoyable conversation with a coworker you normally dread interacting with. The sun peaks out from behind the clouds and you’re starting to feel a little better about the current state of your universe. Then you leave work and get to your car and find your tires slashed and someone left a stack of dad jokes on the passenger seat to rub salt in the wound while you waited for AAA to help out.

That was the Avalanche tonight.

Beating the Rangers on Saturday night brought plenty of positives in a sea of negativity. Then the Avs rolled their way into Winnipeg and should have taken two points. They outplayed the Jets throughout the contest but little mistakes and atrocious goaltending sabotaged one of the team’s better all-around efforts in weeks. They outplayed the Jets at even strength by a wide margin and despite being down 4-1, mounted another spirited comeback.

We’ve seen them come back from being down 4-1 against Arizona, San Jose, and now tonight against Winnipeg to at least make the game interesting. And they have a grand total of zero points in all of those games. Another common thread? Philipp Grubauer started each and got absolutely lit up. Coach Jared Bednar decided to just let Grubauer wear tonight’s performance because they have a back-to-back instead of burning a fresh Semyon Varlamov chasing two points in a game they had a three-goal deficit.

The Avs had an outrageous 41-21 advantage in shots on goal tonight and somehow lost 7-4. Unacceptable.

The moral of a moral victory is that it’s really no victory at all. Tonight, the Avalanche missed another opportunity to gain ground in the standings. For a team that was second in the West a month ago, Colorado is now clinging to a playoff berth by the fingernails. It’s gut check time in the Avalanche locker room.

Takeaways from the game

• There were honestly a lot of positives to draw from in this game. Overall I thought this was the best game the Avs have played in Winnipeg under Jared Bednar. It’s not a particularly high bar bar, to be sure, but I found Colorado’s process to be very encouraging tonight. Even when they got done, they just kept working. Instead of folding up shop in the third period after the fifth and sixth goals, they just kept at it. If they play with that kind of belief on a more regular basis, we’re going to look back at this rough patch and laugh about how worried we all were about this group.
• Let’s get to some of the lower moments. The breakdowns in communication tonight were inexcusable and certainly made Grubauer’s job more difficult. The first goal was a total collapse between Ian Cole and Patrik Nemeth. The second goal, Cole was trying to direct traffic and lost his man in the process as he drifted away from Kyle Connor just enough. I still don’t know what in the world Mikko Rantanen was thinking on the short-handed goal against. Tyson Barrie not only yelled at him to not do exactly what he did, but he saw the extra Avalanche forward coming to attack the exact guy Rantanen left Blake Wheeler alone to drift towards. He didn’t even attack the puck. He just drifted like a boat with broken sails. That’s exactly the kind of mental mistake that has repeatedly cost Colorado in overtime. This time it cost them on the power play. Great.
• I have no idea what Gabe Landeskog was trying to do when he randomly gave the puck right to the Jets and helped create the breakaway that led to the sixth Winnipeg goal. What an absurd sentence to write. Inexplicable decision from the captain? Breakaway? SIXTH goal? What?? And then the penalty from Landeskog in the final three minutes…sigh. The Avalanche simply have to be smarter in the discipline game.
• The special teams continue to be pretty terrible overall but the PP might be finding the tiniest of rhythms. The coaching staff needs to make serious tweaks on the PK especially.
• And let’s just get to the worst part of the game – Grubauer’s play. He got left hanging to dry a bit on some of the goals. No arguments there. But every single goaltender is going to face those situations in a game. Grubauer wasn’t able to provide a single “big” save for Colorado tonight. Every mistake beat them. Hell, even on their fifth goal when it was just a bouncing puck that worked its way through traffic, Andrew Copp used Grubauer’s body against him as he banked the puck off Grubauer’s skate. That’s the kind of goal that lets you know you’re really in the soup. Except soup is delicious and Grubauer’s play tonight was anything but delicious. You don’t get a bigger blah dude than Grubauer tonight.
• On the flip side, Landeskog’s two goals gave him 27 on the year, a new career-high. It’s January 8. Both of his goals were deflection goals, giving him 11 on the year. He absolutely deserves to make the All-Star Game.
• There were lots of things I liked about each of the lines tonight. They all looked engaged and each had legitimate scoring chances at different times. Even the fourth line, constructed of what amounts to roster leftovers right now, drew a penalty that led to a Colorado goal. The bachelor bros on the second line certainly did not find an appropriate reward for their efforts tonight. I thought they had a hell of a game as a trio.
• I mentioned on Twitter early in the game that Carl Soderberg had just four points since December 1. He immediately followed that with a goal and an assist. The play that led to Soderberg’s breakaway goal was a combination of perfect plays all the way up the ice. The outlet pass, the chip up the wall, Soderberg’s chip past the defender and subsequent retrieval. Perfection all the way.
• The goal-scorer that gave Soderberg his sixth point since December 1 was Ryan Graves, who scored his second goal in as many games. He actually played more even strength minutes than Patrik Nemeth tonight and got a small role on the PK. Nikita Zadorov is set to potentially join the team after the Calgary game tomorrow and Mark Barberio should be a full participant in practice this week so there will come a time for Colorado to make a choice on who stays and goes. To my eye, and to the eye of the analytics, Graves has been nothing short of exceptional in his short Avalanche stint. I’m always waiting for the other shoe to drop with guys like him but the longer he stays, the better a story it becomes. I’m not 100% sold I’d take Graves over Nemeth or Barberio long-term but his start has been encouraging enough that Bednar and Co. should be willing to give him that opportunity.
• Mikko Rantanen was a great early-season story but I think it’s becoming clearer by the day that Nathan MacKinnon is the guy driving his line and creating the bulk of the chances for that line. I don’t think there are five players in the NHL I’d take over MacKinnon today.
• REMINDER: We are hosting a watch party on Saturday night for Colorado’s road game against the Montreal Canadiens. Check out details here.