Colorado held on for a solid 5-3 win over the Florida Panthers as they finished their challenging three-game road trip 1-1-1. Now comes a set of three straight back-to-backs.

Studs

Nathan MacKinnon

Starting off with the obvious here. MacKinnon finished the night with two goals and an assist and all three points came on goals 3-5. When the Avs watched their 2-0 lead evaporate in a little over a minute, MacKinnon immediately took the game over and provided the Avs with the kind of spark they have too frequently lacked in those moments this season.

It began literally the shift after the game was tied and finished with him depositing the puck into the empty net to seal the win. It was the kind of thing you should be able to expect from the player who will become the game’s highest-paid player on July 1.

What I really wanted to focus on was the goal that made it 3-2. It starts off the faceoff with MacKinnon winning a footrace to the corner to get the puck cycled. He goes down awkwardly, gets up, then gets into position.

Where I have him highlighted is when he does one of those things that is uniquely Nathan MacKinnon. With Gustav Forsling on his back, he sees Forsling’s stick in front of him and knows he’s on his forehand side, so he spins away from Forsling. Because MacKinnon is so explosive of a skater, Forsling has to respect this and turns his entire body around.

As we see, MacKinnon’s spin was just to shake Forsling loose and create space. Because it creates the amount of space it does, however, Florida doesn’t switch coverage, but the high forward who is supposed to be marking Bowen Byram gives a little extra space just in case Forsling needs the extra help.

MacKinnon makes the pass to Byram and the rebound ends up in the net as a result of Devon Toews reading MacKinnon drifting out high and rotating. All of this began as a result of the little shimmy MacKinnon gave down low.

This is all a great example of how MacKinnon’s singular talent on the ice can have a manipulative effect on the opposing team’s defense and open chances for the guys around him. It’s a major reason he could be headed to a career-high in assists this year.

J.T. Compher

Colorado’s 2C job is going to be a major topic of debate heading into the trade deadline and Compher’s inconsistency this year has helped move that conversation forward. Just this week, we saw him get rocked in that job in Pittsburgh and Tampa Bay, but he was very good last night against his primary assignment, Sasha Barkov.

While Barkov was a game-time decision and has been nursing injuries all year, he’s still one of the game’s premier two-way players for a reason. That’s a big matchup for Compher and he played one of his better games in a while.

His head-to-head against Barkov saw Compher win the Corsi (10-6), shots on goal (8-4) and goals scored (1-0). Compher ended with two assists on the night as had the primary on Matt Nieto’s goal and then Colorado’s empty-net goal.

When Compher rises to the challenge of his current job, Colorado is very hard to beat. Last night was a good example of this.

Colorado’s third period

Hanging on to leads has been a real problem for the Avalanche over the last few months. They’ve hung on and won plenty of games (8 of their last 11, for example) but that number could be 10 of 11 had they not blown leads to Anaheim and Pittsburgh.

They’ve also watched teams climb back into games in third periods and make things more competitive with sustained pushes.

Against the Panthers, they entered with a 4-2 lead, played ten very solid minutes, then gave up a bizarre goal where it just seemed like every 50-50 play went against the Avs and two great players (Barkov and Reinhart) combined to cash it in.

From there, Colorado did not end things with their power play chance and then had to kill a penalty late where it appeared they had given up the tying goal but it hit the post instead. The Avs survived, scored into the empty net and moved on.

It wasn’t dominant. It wasn’t clinical. It was at times shaky (everyone thinking the game had been tied was a weird moment for all), but it wasn’t one-sided and it didn’t feel inevitable that Florida would tie it. Just look at this shot chart.

There’s still room for improvement, but you don’t fix your problems in one fell swoop. It takes time. This was a third period to build on, especially as they were down one of their more reliable presences in Erik Johnson.

Duds

Bowen Byram in his own zone

I’m specifying here because I thought Byram offensively was quite good and really liked the way he was moving pucks and helping to spark some offense. He added another assist, giving him seven points in 13 games and two in the three games since his return. His offense has been good.

Defensively, however, he has struggled a bit to regain the footing he found during the Cup run last spring. I stress that it has only been three games and have full confidence he’ll get to the level we expect of him, but that doesn’t make a player immune from criticism.

There were turnovers compounded by subsequent bad decisions and gap control breakdowns. He lost his way a bit in his own zone last night and will probably have a productive video session on Monday when the Avs get back at practice.

Alexandar Georgiev for 1:05

To be clear, I thought Georgiev oscillated between spectacular and dreadful all in the same game. The two goals he gave up I thought were brutal and unacceptable. He has at times struggled on shots from distance, a la the Ekblad goal to make it 2-1. His puck-tracking in those spots has been inconsistent and he has let a decent number of goals from that area.

The second goal he just gets beat. It’s definitely a nice shot from Bennett, but that’s the kind of scoring chance you simply expect your goaltender to snag.

It wasn’t very good from Georgiev, and he has been prone to give up goals in bunches this year. Once his heart rate settled, he got back to being very good and then got a little lucky at the end when Florida hit the post but thought they had scored to tie the game.

On paper, it’s a great one from Georgiev with 42 saves on 45 shots, but boy those 65 seconds could have really flipped the script in this one had MacKinnon not come to life the way he did.

Unsung Hero

Colorado’s depth

Logan O’Connor and Matt Nieto scored the first two goals of the game, LOC’s coming shorthanded. They were good throughout. Andreas Englund had one of his best games as an Av in my opinion. He was physical throughout and played very good in-zone defense, especially with no Erik Johnson around and everyone raising the level a bit.

I thought Brad Hunt performed admirably despite being waived earlier in the day. There’s a chance Hunt was playing while another team was placing a claim on him, ending his Avalanche tenure. We’ll find out later today if that was the case, but you would have understood where Hunt mailed in the effort last night. He didn’t, however, and that’s probably one of many reasons they are hoping Hunt gets through the process cleanly.

I had very few issues with the play of Kurtis MacDermid and I know some people were wanting to crush him for how he played the Sam Bennett goal. I’ll say I didn’t love how shaded across the ice he was when he had help, but I understand him being there. He made a competitive play on Bennett. If Georgiev stops that, none of us think twice about it and without having to explain myself I could have freely put MacDermid here.

All of those contributions were needed after EJ left the game very early on and didn’t return. The 11-7 alignment worked out nicely for that reason on its own, but those guys still had to play well and I thought they did.

Even Denis Malgin, playing alongside Nieto and a rotating center, was pretty solid in this game. It was a lot of good, solid, effective hockey from the Avalanche lineup up and down, but I thought the role players really stepped up nicely in an important spot.