Avalanche winning streak ends in COVID-riddled fiasco in Nashville

What the hell was that?

A game was just played tonight in which 12 players between two teams (seven for Nashville, five for Colorado) were unable to participate due to positive COVID tests and a 13th, Jack Johnson, was held out of most of the first period as waited for test results.

In addition to that, it ended up being at least four Nashville coaches unable to be on the bench due to their own positive tests.

Around the NHL, over 60 players were added to the NHL’s COVID Protocol in the last 72 hours. While the league insisted games go on for just about everyone except the Calgary Flames, the Avs had a conversation about whether or not they wanted to play tonight.

Having already flown to Nashville, suited up, gone through warm-ups and spent their entire lives drilling the “next man up” mentality into their brains, of course the Avalanche mentality was “sure, why not?”

A bunch of people who have made their lives built around competing wanted…the chance to compete. Fair enough.

People like me can look at the decimated lineup of 11 forwards and five defensemen and just one goaltender and say, “Hey, what a weird night, right? Why’d they decide to do that?” That’s easy. Lauding success and second-guessing failure is par for the course for keyboard cops such as myself.

You can also understand where the Avalanche players and staff are coming from. They’re going to have to play this game anyway, even if it was postponed. They’re already in Nashville. Given they have caught basically zero breaks this year on the personnel front, the make-up game could be in even worse circumstances.

Who knows?

What the Avs knew was what was in front of them and there’s something genuinely admirable about them deciding to go for it anyway. I’ll call it reckless and irresponsible, if not from a humanity standpoint of expecting even more positive COVID tests from both teams in the coming days, then from a strategic standpoint of giving the competitive advantage away to a division rival with those points potentially looming large later this year.

I repeat, who knows?

They decided to play on. The Avs lost 5-2 in a game that was 3-2 halfway through the third period and was a reminder of how cruel hockey can be. The Avs have gotten a lot of good bounces recently and tonight the exact opposite was true. A compromised Preds roster outplayed and outlucked a compromised Avs roster.

Pavel Francouz played his first meaningful NHL game since the Edmonton bubble when his hip problems were helping the Dallas Stars build a 3-1 series lead before Francouz finally couldn’t handle it anymore and left, only to miss all of the following season with double hip surgery and the first two months of this season with a sprained ankle.

It’s been a long road back for Francouz and it was encouraging to see him back in net. He even played pretty well, given everything going on in front of him.

The Avalanche defense of Sam Girard, Erik Johnson, Jack Johnson (once he cleared testing protocols), Jordan Gross, Justin Barron and for a few minutes, Kurtis MacDermid isn’t exactly the imposing group that people look at when they talk about the defense being one of the league’s best groups.

It’s okay to say that this wasn’t the best foot forward. Every guy in this alignment had to play over their heads, Girard included. Every guy struggled. That’s a pretty natural thing, especially when Barron was in his second NHL game and Gross just his 10th.

All chaotic elements aside, the hockey itself just wasn’t very good. The Avs were okay at times but nobody would confuse this version with the wagon we’ve seen the last month.

The Preds weren’t a whole lot better themselves. A couple of good bounces and Juuse Saros being excellent per usual and the two biggest Avs killers in Nashville, Filip Forsberg and Colton Sissons, each had three-point games.

Tonight, that was enough. Credit goes to them for getting the two points. Credit to the Avs for being willing to try.

The reality is that this game probably shouldn’t have happened, but it did. If you ever wanted to see what a preseason lineup would look like in a game that counted, now you have your answer. Let’s hope it isn’t the beginning of a string of them.

TAKEAWAYS

• I don’t really care much that the Avs decided to go forward with the game. As stated above, competitors want to compete. Of course that’s the decision they wanted to make. What I really really REALLY have a problem with is the NHL putting teams in this Catch-22 situation. If the league is going to insist on playing through this particular COVID spike and refuse to cancel games because the teams aren’t compromised enough to meet their magical invisible line of “too sick to play”, the league also cannot continue to insist teams abide by the salary cap rules as is and force clubs to play without the regular 18 skaters. It’s insane to hold teams to both standards. Pick an avenue. If canceling games is not realistic, then taxi squads need to be brought back to stem this ridiculous wave of pulling guys out of the lineup during warm-ups. When teams take chances with the salary cap, they’re dancing with a devil by choice. When teams are just trying to ice a full roster because they are decimated by COVID, continuing to punish those teams creates a competitive imbalance that should deeply bother everyone involved in the sport. Given this is regularly happening around the league right now, it’s crazy to me the players association isn’t going absolute ballistic about this.
• I’m on grades tonight so my player thoughts can all be found over there!