Avalanche winning streak hits seven behind balanced offensive attack

After a nine-game homestand that saw the Avalanche go 7-1-1 and come within a couple of bounces of going a clean 9-0, Colorado hit the road again on Monday night.

It had been a while since the Avs had been somewhere other than the friendly surroundings of Ball Arena and for the first ten minutes or so, they certainly looked like a fish out of water.

The Arizona Coyotes didn’t exactly punch the Avs in the mouth or anything, but they prevented the kinds of offensive onslaughts the Avs have been laying on teams during their homestand.

And in the blink of just over 90 seconds, all of Arizona’s hard work was undone after the Avs got goals from P.E. Bellemare and Mikko Rantanen.

The 2-0 lead at the end of the first built into 3-0, then 3-1, and finally landed on a 5-1 victory for the Avs as the Coyotes made things interesting for all of about two shifts in the third period.

This was the kind of game that reinforces all of hockey’s favorite cliches. Most notably, tonight’s win was a picture-perfect example of “needing all four lines going.”

That’s because all four lines scored goals with the Tyson Jost-led third line scoring twice in the final minutes to get the Avs to their five-goal final tally.

In reality, nothing about this game was particularly special and two weeks from now we’ll struggle to remember the details of tonight. In the world of using a regular season to build a mature, battle-tested team come playoff time, it’s important Colorado learns to win different styles of games.

While this eventually turned into another lopsided Avalanche shooting gallery, this was nothing like the team’s extremely impressive and dominant sweep of the Minnesota Wild from last week.

While the Wild wins were driven by elite showings from Colorado’s top line, tonight’s game featured a much more pedestrian performance from the vaunted three-headed monster, save for one Rantanen snipe that gave the Avs their 2-0 lead in the first period.

No, this was a game dominated by Colorado’s bottom six for once. It’s been a season-long struggle for some of those guys, as Bellemare, Jost, Matt Calvert, and J.T. Compher came into this game with a combined 12 points. Tonight, that group had five alone, led by two assists from Jost.

If the Avs are going to make a deep run, those guys are going to have to find nights to produce offense. The process has been good most of this year but production had been lacking. Tonight is just one night but it has to start somewhere.

It’s another feather in Colorado’s cap and seven-game winning streaks are pretty hard to nitpick.

Tomorrow’s game against the Coyotes will be interesting. Does new goaltender Jonas Johansson, with two whole practices with the team under his belt, make his Avalanche debut or do the Avs ride Grubauer again and give Johansson time to adjust to his new team in front of him?

The Avs have games against Anaheim and Arizona next week after their upcoming clash of the titans with Vegas so it is realistic the Avs kick this can down the road. Either way, tomorrow goes for eight in a row tomorrow before they set their sights on the Golden Knights.

TAKEAWAYS

• We talked on the podcast about the 16-game stretch between Vegas matchups and how it was setup for the Avs to realistically go 12-4. After starting 2-2, the Avs are now 11-3-1 with just tomorrow’s game to go. The team found its legs and took advantage of the weak schedule and a nine-game homestand to really put themselves in a spot to challenge Vegas for the West Division title.
• The top line got on the score sheet but this was not my favorite Gabe Landeskog game. Some turnovers with the puck and he looked like the weakest link on that line when normally he’s the perfect glue guy. Not a big deal and he still snagged an assist but I didn’t love his work. MacKinnon was his normal high-flying self and Rantanen got the big-time goal but he was also a little quiet outside of that.
• The PP didn’t get much time but I really didn’t like what I saw. It felt very stagnant as they were standing around waiting for Cale Makar to shoot pucks, which he did. Makar was missing the net and when the Avs would reload, it was right back up high to Makar without much threat or attempt to do anything differently. If there’s one thing about having Girard run that unit, it’s that his lack of desire to shoot a lot forces them to work harder to create scoring chances versus just standing there and letting Makar do stuff.
• My favorite line tonight was actually Colorado’s ‘third’ line. It’s been a slow burn but the chemistry between Nichushkin/Jost/Donskoi is building and they each had legitimate scoring chances in this game. Their collective work on the forecheck alone produced three scoring chances and they combined for 12 shots on goal. They were just buzzing about and I loved their work. If they can start to tilt the ice like that on offense and not just be excellent at shot suppression, they’re going to take the form of an actual third line and not a glorified second line. That ENG was a reward for great work all game and then the fifth goal was just for funsies.
• Philipp Grubauer’s Vezina case continues to build but it’s interesting. How do you balance that Grubauer has been excellent but definitely hasn’t had the workload as he’s playing behind what has been a dominant defensive team for the last two weeks? Vasilevskiy is still the runaway winner right now for me but Grubauer has definitely moved into the top three. He just keeps winning and allowing minimal pucks to get behind him and at some point you just say okay pal, we get it, you’re incredible.
• I love the balanced attack from Colorado tonight. Every single forward except Brandon Saad had a shot on goal and Saad had a partial breakaway where he slipped the puck between Antti Raanta’s legs and just wide of the net. Not every line played their best but that kind of attack is such a problem to deal with.
• Ryan Graves…another very good game. He’s quietly strung together some strong performances now…
• Hell yeah, Pierre-Edouard Bellemare. Happy he got that one.