Avalanche top Stars in Dallas behind fresh faces

Because it’s me and y’all know how I love digging up a number/stat and calling it a “fun fact” (sometimes they aren’t so fun), I decided to lead off my first postgame piece this season doing the same thing. So…

Fun fact!

Artturi Lehkonen has more games played in the postseason than regular season as a member of the Colorado Avalanche (20 to 16). Given his obvious role in the team’s postseason success (team-leading four game-winning goals, including series-clinching goals in the Western Conference Final and Stanley Cup Final), it’s easy to forget he really hasn’t been a big part of the team’s runs during the season.

Coming off a summer where the Avs largely retained their talent, that haul included trade deadline acquisitions in Lehkonen, Josh Manson, and Andrew Cogliano. Lehkonen got the longest deal, however, with a five-year pact that says the team expects him to be a cog in the team’s top-six forward alignment for the life of that contract.

It’s a small leap of faith from the team as Lehkonen just produced a career-high last year with 19 goals and 19 assists for 38 points in 74 games. His point-per-game production in Colorado, where he jumped to over 16 minutes during the regular season and over 17 minutes during the playoffs, also took a leap forward in his increased role in Colorado’s lethal forward group.

In fact, Lehkonen’s goal pace during the playoffs would have him scoring 32 goals across an 82-game season. That’s a pretty big jump for a guy who doesn’t yet have a 20-goal season under his belt.

I bring all of this up because, in Colorado’s fifth preseason game tonight, Lehkonen played his first game of the new year and scored two of Colorado’s goals in the team’s 3-1 victory over the Stars.

Two periods of this game were without any goals and was yet another penalty-marred affair, something that is all too common in the preseason. Both of Lehkonen’s goals came off centering feeds from down low, first from Mikko Rantanen and second from Evan Rodrigues, and both were quality shots that simply beat Stars prodigy Jake Oettinger cleanly.

That lead held up despite a Nils Lundkvist goal to cut the lead to 2-1 just as Dallas’s fifth power play of the night was coming to an end. Technically, the Avs killed the penalty but Ben Meyers really hadn’t had much of a chance to rejoin the play after serving the penalty for a too many men call two minutes earlier.

Colorado would survive a late Dallas push behind brilliant goaltending from Pavel Francouz, who stopped 38 of 39 shots to show the form he’s capable of after a disappointing five-goal-against performance last week against Minnesota.

Francouz is still ticketed as the backup in Denver, for now, but performances like this are why the organization is encouraged that should Alexandar Georgiev falter in his bid to truly secure the starting goaltender’s job, they have a player they can fall back on in Francouz to battle hard on their behalf.

To secure his first unofficial goal as an Av and put the game away, Evan Rodrigues scored into the empty net with just eight seconds remaining for a two-point night. I believe that makes him Colorado’s highest-scoring player with three points this preseason but nobody seems to actually track these stats so I’m guessing there.

Either way, Rodrigues is another newcomer who continues to look very comfortable at the onset of his Avalanche tenure and his fit within their speed and skill-infused identity remains as obvious as it was when free agency opened and the two sides danced around one another for the entire summer.

Lots to be encouraged by at the top of Colorado’s roster but the battle at the bottom was nothing short of a disappointment in my eyes. Looking for some separation, all of Ben Meyers, Martin Kaut, Jayson Megna, Lukas Sedlak, Anton Blidh, and Shane Bowers had nights that either included a penalty (Meyers, Bowers, Megna) or overall disappointing performances and getting obliterated in shot metrics (Sedlak and Blidh). Of the group, Kaut was the least bad, but that’s not exactly a ringing endorsement.

The Avs are dealing with some minor/lingering injury issues as we near the end of the preseason Wednesday so the battle at the bottom of the roster will continue to be interesting to watch.