The Colorado Avalanche finished a critical five-game homestand with a 3-2 overtime loss to the Winnipeg Jets. The loss put the Avs at 2-2-1 on the homestand with the last three coming against the teams directly in front of them in the Central Division standings.
It’s obviously not a huge loss to get five of 10 possible points, but they gained no meaningful ground on the teams they are chasing. The reality is that they have to outplay those teams, breaking even isn’t going to be good enough anymore.
Tonight, they did outplay the Jets pretty much from start to finish. It wasn’t a thorough domination or anything, but this was a strong effort that ended up a loss because of the greatness of Jets goaltender Connor Hellebuyck and a little puck luck for the Jets.
Colorado fell to 14-10-2 at home, a mediocre mark that is keeping them from making a serious move up the standings. They just cannot seem to find that rhythm at home beyond their excellent play in December.
Let’s talk about it.
Much more competitive effort for the Avs
After the listless game against Minnesota, seeing some fighting spirit from the Avalanche tonight felt paramount. They had spent most of this homestand playing pretty bland hockey.
The Avs haven’t been dangerous offensively and despite being stout defensively, they weren’t turning defense into offense, which has been a staple of the Jared Bednar-era Avs.
Tonight, we saw plenty of that with an awesome night from Cale Makar, but we also saw a team-wide commitment to playing hard that we have not seen as frequently as we should have this season.
Colorado’s reputation as “easy to play against” has been true more on the internet than in NHL circles but this season they have leaned a little too far into the narrative.
We saw a much more competitive team tonight that was making the Jets work for everything. Winnipeg had to work to leave the zone, work for possession in the neutral zone, and had to work to get the puck back when the Avs gained control.
The end result wasn’t what the Avs wanted, but this was a game where their process was much better than it has been for a while, even including some of their recent wins. It would be great to see more of this club.
The Avalanche stars were awesome
Mikko Rantanen had his typical late start, but once he got going in the third period he was nasty. He joined Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar as they took this game over with the Avs trying to level the game at 2-2 in the final frame.
They eventually did on a slick drop pass from Rantanen to Makar, whose finish will be one of the goals of the year and part of his career highlight reel when he retires. MacKinnon also scored Colorado’s first goal, so you’re looking at the totality of Colorado’s offense here.
The Avalanche Holy Trinity piled up the chances as they accounted for 30 of Colorado’s 59 shot attempts at 5v5, 21 of their 33 scoring chances, and 10 of their 16 high-danger chances.
That’s a dominant performance that deserved a better result. It has to be noted that MacKinnon absolutely blew the coverage in overtime that gave Neal Pionk a wide-open shot that he converted into the game-winning goal.
The main problem was this next guy.
Connor Hellebuyck is exacting some revenge
Hellebuyck was brilliant last season en route to his second Vezina Trophy and was the clear-cut top goaltender during the regular season. Memorably, the Avalanche didn’t give a damn about any of that and embarrassed him in the playoffs as they put up more than five goals per game in their destruction of him in yet another shaky postseason for the star goaltender.
Hellebuyck can’t do anything about that postseason reputation yet, but he’s taking it out on the Avalanche so far this season. He shut them out the first two times he played them this year and then allowed two goals tonight.
Those goals were MacKinnon beating him but hitting the post for the second time in the game but the rebound went right back to MacKinnon instead of sliding underneath him as the first one had done. The second one, well, it’s pretty special stuff from Makar.
All told, Hellebuyck’s 25 saves on 27 shots is a very good night but he made 10 saves on high-danger chances to keep the Avs from giving him a repeat performance of last year’s playoffs.
The Avs were dangerous offensively tonight. Hellebuyck was just better.
