A few seasons ago, when the Colorado Avalanche was first on the rise, there was a game played in Denver against the Washington Capitals. The Capitals were at the height of their competitiveness as Stanley Cup contenders, and many touted this game as a can’t miss matchup between an up and coming team, and a true contender.

I remember watching that game and realizing just how far the Avs still had to go to be in that truly elite tier. The game wasn’t a blowout, it’s not like Colorado got run out of the building, but they lost and it was somewhat of a wake-up call for the Avs and their fans that, hey… you’re getting there, but you’re not quite there yet.

That is exactly how these two games between the Avalanche and the New York Rangers, seven days apart, have felt to me.

The Rangers are a young, exciting, very skilled team that is overachieving a bit this year. Especially when you compare it to what the preseason expectations were for them.

When you watch them go up against a top team like the Avs, you get a real good grasp for just how much now-injured goaltender Igor Shesterkin has carried the load for them to this point in the season.

The game last week in New York was fun, there was plenty of skill on display, and any time you get to see Adam Fox and Cale Makar go head to head, it’s awesome, but when the Avalanche decided it was time to take it up a gear, the Rangers just simply couldn’t match.

And tonight honestly felt the same for me. The score wasn’t anywhere near as lopsided as it was at Madison Square Garden, as the Avs ultimately won tonight by a final score of 4-2, but after an initial push from New York to start the game, they really looked like they were just trying to keep up with Colorado.

The Avs got going in the first period with a pair of goals from Mikko Rantanen and, you guessed it, Cale Makar. 

The goal that opened up the scoring, was the first example of the Avs just having another level that the Rangers just couldn’t match. After a minute or so of nice pressure by the Rangers, Nathan MacKinnon grabbed the puck and decided it was time to go score a goal. He flew into the zone, ducked behind the net and made a fantastic no-look little touch pass to Rantanen, who was wide open for an easy tap in.

Cale Makar did what Cale Makar has been doing all season and put the Avs up by two with an absolute laser, and the Avs would take that lead into the locker room.

The second period, the Avs seemed content to somewhat slow things down, and play within their structure, just making sure they weren’t giving the Rangers anything. It was good, boring hockey.

Then Kurtis MacDermid jumped over the boards.

The Avs’ big man has been trying to find someone who is willing to fight him for the last several games now, and to the surprise of no one who has ever seen him, he’s had a hard time finding someone to oblige.

Tonight, however, frequent #1 villain and fighting heavyweight Ryan Reaves was looking to give his team a spark and decided to drop the gloves with MacDermid.

While I wouldn’t say it was a pummeling, that fight absolutely did not go the way most Ryan Reaves fights go. He was giving both reach and size to the 6’6” MacDermid, and it showed. MacDermid got in a few good licks, before taking Reaves to the ice.

MacDermid, and the whole team, was absolutely fired up. It was a really cool moment for a guy that has been putting in a ton of work.

The Rangers would pull within one goal twice, but as I said earlier, the Avs just looked like the better team, and when they wanted to push back and create offense, they did. 

The final score was 4-2, but the Avalanche really seemed to control the flow of much of this game, and when they weren’t in control, Darcy Kuemper was fantastic. He has strung together multiple really strong performances, and you can even see it in the team’s confidence in front of him.

Colorado is scheduled to head to Nashville for a one-game trip to take on the Predators, but pretty much all scheduling for this week in the NHL comes with an asterisk.

Multiple COVID-19 outbreaks have cropped up all across the league (including in Nashville), with a few teams being shut down for anywhere from three to seven days. So we’ll see if they actually make the trip, or if it becomes a game that needs to be made up later. Either way, the Avs are playing the best we’ve seen from them this season and are doing it with a depleted roster, and I’m sure they’d rather just keep rolling along, but if they do have a postponement, they’ll take it as an opportunity for some guys to rest up and heal some bumps and bruises.

See look, gotta try to find the positives in life. Now more than ever.

TAKEAWAYS

• Let’s start with MacDermid. He started this season as the fan base’s newest scapegoat. It was an offseason acquisition that, at face value, didn’t make a ton of sense. He wasn’t a guy that really matched the mold of player they’ve brought in recently. His skating was.. pretty rough, he wasn’t a point producer, and despite his size, didn’t have a huge track record of fights. Oh! And the first thing the team said they liked about him was that he could play at forward, or on defense. Just all things that didn’t really add up. So when things got off to a so-so start for the Avs, and MacDermid was in the lineup, it was easy to point to his mistakes as costing the team goals, but Jared Bednar thinks he’s a long way from that player we saw in October.

“I think he’s fantastic right now, really,” Bednar said. “He’s a confident player, he’s been putting a lot of extra work… the other day after pregame skate, our whole team was off, and he was out there for another 20 minutes working on his own”.

Bednar had a lot of great things to say about him, and his teammates seem to love him. Not to mention, that he sent a message tonight that he’s one of the toughest customers in the league.

• Justin Barron made his NHL debut tonight, and I thought he totally held his own. For me, that is all you want to see a young guy do when he’s getting his first taste of NHL action. This is the best league in the world, played at a pace that is hard to even comprehend, and I thought he looked like he belonged. I expect him to get a prolonged look here too, with Devon Toews being in the COVID Protocol until at the very least, the Christmas break.
• Ok, this is the one that I’m sure, everyone is waiting for me to talk about. JT Compher had a power-play goal disallowed for goaltender interference late in the third period, and it had the potential to completely change the game. As Cale Makar shot the puck from the point, Compher flashed across the front of the net, clearly outside of the blue paint, and I guess did technically make some level of contact, extremely minimal in my opinion, with Rangers goalie Alexandar Georgiev. Let’s pause here for a second, since there was contact, I can at least understand the rationale for overturning it. I don’t think there was anywhere near enough there to do that, but it is what it is. My real issue came from the fact the Rangers coaches got almost two full minutes before they had to decide if they wanted to challenge the call on the ice or not.

This is a problem. The rule that was put in place, saying that if you got the challenge wrong your team would be assessed a penalty, to prevent teams from challenging things like this. Things that are so small, and insignificant, that it takes 50 replays from 10 different angles to make a decision. No team should get that kind of clock to decide if it’s a play they want to challenge or not.

Don’t think it should count? Cool, challenge it. If you can’t make up your mind, sorry, drop the puck and play on.

Bednar wouldn’t comment on the ruling itself, I’m sure trying to avoid a fine from the league,  but when I asked him if he had any thoughts on how long New York got to make up their minds, he had plenty to say. “Yeah, they got two minutes,” he said. “It feels like when I’m thinking about challenging about something, I can’t even get to the second replay and the refs are leaning over the boards ‘you challenging? You challenging?’, and they had two full minutes and no-one is even saying anything… it’s too long”.

He’s 100% right. I have long advocated for a “shot clock” for coach’s challenges. A 30-second clock should start from the moment the puck crosses the line to start your conversation with officials. You have video coaches upstairs that are looking at that stuff in real-time. If it truly shouldn’t count, that should be more than enough time.

The puck doesn’t lie though, and Valeri Nichsushkin eventually sprung himself on a breakaway to finally get the Avs that fourth one and put the Broadway Blueshirts away for good.