Avalanche shutout Wild to continue undefeated preseason

The Colorado Avalanche played the final home preseason game on their schedule tonight as they welcomed in the hated Minnesota Wild for another tilt. The first period would look awfully familiar to previous versions of this matchup as the Wild absolutely dominated the Avalanche all over the ice, leading the period 13-2 in shots on goal.

Avalanche goaltender Semyon Varlamov slammed the door shut, however, and kept the game a scoreless tie heading into the second period. Once there, the Avalanche quickly found their legs, closing the shots gap and dominating the period throughout.

The hard work would pay off when Jarome Iginla made a great cross-ice pass to Chris Bigras, who was alone on the doorstep and slammed home a one-timer behind a diving Darcy Kuemper for the 1-0 lead at the 9:18 mark of the period.

Not done pouring on the pressure, the Avalanche would add to their lead on a play that saw Kuemper make several saves that led to juicy rebounds and after stopping Cody McLeod and Trent Vogelhuber, Carl Soderberg finally deposited the puck into the net for the 2-0 lead just 1:13 after the Bigras goal.

The Wild would push back a little towards the end of the period but not hard enough to break the Varlamov wall as they entered the third period staring down the barrel of a 2-0 deficit.

A relatively harmless third period would see the Wild outshoot the Avalanche 10-4 but Varlamov’s excellent play continued as he secured the shutout.

THREE STARS

1. Semyon Varlamov
2. Carl Soderberg
3. Chris Bigras

PLAY OF THE GAME

Without a doubt, the play of the game came courtesy of a guy in the crowd who did the q-tip on the jumbotron. He even had the audacity to finish it off by throwing it away. What a hero.

Really, though, it was the Chris Bigras backdoor goal that put the Avalanche up 1-0 and ended up being the game-wnning goal. It was an excellent example of what Bigras consistently brings to the ice (high hockey IQ) and the goal just added more confidence to a player likely going to make the opening night roster.

TURNING POINT

It came early on, but the “turning point” was Varlamov holding steady near the end of the first period as the Wild were pouring on shots and dominating the game. Without that, the Avalanche never have a chance to regroup and their strong second period would have been playing from behind instead of putting the Avalanche in the lead.

BY THE NUMBERS

The Avs were outshot for the third time in four games, this time to the tune of 30-19. A growing story here so far has been the success of the penalty kill, which currently sits at 100% across four games. For the second consecutive game, Mikhail Grigorenko was excellent in the faceoff circle, going 7-1 tonight for a success rate of 88%.

QUOTE OF THE GAME

“We want to win very game we play, exhibition or not. That’s got to be our mindset. We’ve got to believe we can do it and we gotta have the mindset that we’re going to go in and win the game.” – head coach Jared Bednar on the team’s 4-0 preseason record

WHAT’S NEXT

The Avalanche are back in action tomorrow night as they head to Dallas to take on the Stars at 6:30 p.m. mountain time.