Avalanche topple Stars in relatively routine victory

On Super Bowl Sunday, the NHL had the brilliant (I’m not being sarcastic) idea to blow off a morning of talking about something that’s going to happen later and have a handful of NHL teams play make-up games from the waves of COVID that crashed onto the league’s shores during December.

One of those games took what would have been a New Year’s Eve tilt in Dallas between the Stars and Colorado Avalanche and dropped it into the noon (in Denver) slot, just enough time to watch a decent hockey game before everyone got to their planned business in harshly judging commercials and hoping the game was watchable (it was!).

Games that start that early have all the variance in the world because it completely screws up an athlete’s circadian rhythm. Imagine your boss calling you and telling you that you, a person who normally starts work at 9 AM, have to be in the office to start your shift at 3 AM, but only on this one day.

It tends to lead to messy hockey is what I’m saying.

Today’s game wasn’t really all that different. The big difference here is the Avs didn’t spot the Stars a 2-0 lead within the first few minutes of the game starting and, boy, would you look at that final result?

Darcy Kuemper recorded his second shutout of the season as the Avs cruised to a 4-0 victory that had very little drama attached to it.

The Avs scored twice in the first period, both the result of great plays started by Cale Makar but finished by Gabe Landeskog and Nazem Kadri, who set that career-high in points for a season with the goal.

While the Stars had the better of the shots in the second period, it was very low-danger opportunities for the Stars and Kuemper stood tall and stopped all 14 shots.

Despite trailing 2-0, the Stars would must just four shots on goal in the third period while Colorado managed ten, including Nicolas Aube-Kubel’s seventh goal of the season that started when Valeri Nichushkin blew a tire and fell down inside the blue line and kept the puck from exiting the zone.

It was that kind of game for Dallas but also the kind of ho-hum dominant defensive performance we haven’t seen out of the Avs as much as we did last year.

What really sticks out here is the Avs walking into Dallas, playing the style of game the Stars prefer (low event, grind-it-out, dominate special teams battle) and walking out with an easier-than-expected two points.

Since that 4-5-1 start, the Avs moved to 30-3-3 on the season, which is just as absurd on paper as it is in reality. They hit 72 points on the season before any team in the Pacific Division has even hit 60 and only Minnesota and Nashville (61 and 60, respectively) have even hit it from the Central Division.

Colorado gets home from Dallas as they prepare to play, well, Dallas again on Tuesday in Denver but sporting an 11-point lead over the second-place Wild. Even with Minnesota’s three games in hand advantage, that’s at worst a five-point lead for Colorado if the Wild won all of those games.

It’s a pretty sizeable gap opening up right now as the team continues to either beat the teams in front of it or salvage a point in a loss (only two regulation losses since December 1 and none in 2022).

On a pretty super Sunday, the team having maybe the best regular-season across all the four major sports flexed its dominant muscles once again.

TAKEAWAYS

• Everyone knows how Colorado has been absolutely absurd at Ball Arena, but I thought this was interesting when digging through some of the numbers. Darcy Kuemper’s last three road starts: Shutout versus Arizona (20 SOG), 40 saves on 41 shots versus Los Angeles, shutout versus Dallas (23 SOG). Two great defensive performances but Kuemper locked it down. Among goalies with at least 20 starts this year (AKA starters), Kuemper is now all the way up to 12th in save percentage. It’s been a steady climb since December began and he’s really locked in right now and playing some great hockey. Maybe there’s hope for that Vezina bet after all?
• Just one of those days today where Cale Makar was simply better than everyone else. It wasn’t quite the highlight dunkathon we’ve seen from him a few times this year, but go back and watch how special the plays he makes on both of the first goals actually are. The first goal, especially, where he shows off his elite edgework in protecting the puck while hard cutting away from a Dallas player who was trying to get the bouncing puck. Makar’s subtle skills like that are what truly separates him from the pack. The play he makes to Kadri confuses me because he’s one of the league’s very best attacking along the wall and even though the Stars finished the play with three players attacking him, they left him too much space initially to do work and each hit the panic button to cover him. Why do teams allow that hand-off to Makar in the first place? If I’m scouting the Avs, I’m telling my forwards to hard switch and cut that play off before it can ever begin, even if it runs the risk of a penalty to rub Makar out along the wall. He does too much damage to teams from those situations.
• Aube-Kubel’s goal was pretty silly and not Braden Holtby’s finest moment but it was another feather in the cap of a player who I think has really helped solidify Colorado’s bottom-six forwards. There was a lot of fluidity to that group coming into the year and we’re seeing some players really lock down jobs and I think Aube-Kubel is one of them. He has really started to walk the line of playing with a physical edge without hurting his team a whole lot better. In his first 20 games in Colorado, NAK had 27 PIMs. In his last 14 games? Just six PIMs. That’s the kind of improvement he needed to show and he has.