Studs

Cale Makar

On a night where the other Avalanche stars were, relative to their abilities, just okay (MacKinnon’s 14 shots on goal is an obviously absurd statistic), Makar was the guy who seemed to have his legs all night and really get going.

His defensive game wasn’t very good and the numbers reflect that, but what he did offensively was once again a thing that is hard to quantify and explain.

He finished with five shots on goal but he was dangerous with his legs all night and his work breaking pucks out and generating offense was excellent. Then, you know, he scored the game-tying goal with 1:26 to go. I have no idea why Luke Kunin thought giving Makar that much space was a good idea, but he just never came out to challenge Makar, the best goal-scoring defenseman in the world, and his team eventually lost the game. Whoops.

Alexandar Georgiev

This was a night of statistical dominance by the team in front of him, but I still want to give Georgiev his flowers despite not being asked to do a ton while facing just 21 shots on goal. The Sharks were surprisingly effective at creating quality chances more than quantity.

Through two periods, especially, San Jose was keeping even with the Avalanche with 20 scoring chances and seven high-danger chances at all situations. That’s respectable enough. The big moment, however, came just under seven minutes into the second period when Kunin broke in completely alone on a breakaway and Georgiev shut him down.

That kept the game at 1-0 and once the third period hit, the Avs just…stopped allowing shots against. Georgiev only had to make one save in overtime but stopped all three Sharks shooters in the shootout.

Fun fact: since coming to the Avalanche, Georgiev is number one in the NHL in victories in the shootout with six in nine tries. He’s given up just six shootout goals in 32 attempts, an insane .813 save percentage. For reference, only four goalies with at least nine shootout games have a save percentage north of .800, so the run Georgiev has been on since joining the Avalanche is exceptional.

(Another fun fact: The only goaltender with a perfect 1.000 save percentage in more than one shootout appearance is…Pavel Francouz, who has 12 saves on 12 attempts.)

Artturi Lehkonen

It was a night with a LOT of really good games from Avalanche players so it’s hard to single some guys out but Lehkonen was one that I really loved. He was flying and he was hard on pucks, digging away along the wall and doing good work no matter what line he was on.

He got going well enough that he got put in the familiar spot next to MacKinnon and Rantanen as the third period wore on and Jared Bednar was looking for an answer from that top line in terms of tying up the game. Lehkonen finished with zero points but had eight shots on goal and 24/2 Corsi at 5v5 with 16 scoring chances for and only 2 against.

I could easily put Valeri Nichushkin in this same spot because he was also awesome and just as dominant in terms of shot metrics. Those guys absolutely lit up the Sharks depth.

The penalty kill

A strength from Game 1 against the Kings, this unit once again posted a perfect game as they did not allow San Jose to score on any of their four attempts with the man advantage. They nearly scored a shorthanded goal in the second period when Logan O’Connor rang one off the bottom of the crossbar on a 2v1.

One of the biggest moments in this game that led to an Avalanche victory was Colorado successfully killing off a penalty in overtime when MacKinnon was called for Kneeing. San Jose had a 4v3 advantage and managed just five shot attempts in the two minutes. Only one shot actually got to Georgiev, two missed, and two were blocked. That’s a great bit of PK work in a hard situation with the game on the line and so much extra space that teams very rarely practice.

Josh Manson in particular had a positive impact during this period of the game.

Duds

The ice

I’m starting here because my goodness was this just hard to watch at times. The Avs eventually settled into it and stopped trying to be the Ice Globetrotters with some of their cute passing tendencies getting interrupted by really choppy ice, but it was an obvious challenge for both teams all night.

As good as Colorado’s PK was in overtime, you could also see the ice was in terrible shape as the Sharks had a whale of a time settling the puck down and moving it. Some of these warmer climates struggle with ice conditions this early in the season but also a team with a talent deficiency as pronounced as San Jose’s is going to benefit a decent amount from bad ice. We definitely saw that play a role in shaping this outcome.

Colorado’s power play

The PK was great, the PP was a little more lacking in this one. The unit started out really hot as their first attempt didn’t result in a goal but they were putting all kinds of pucks into dangerous spots and they came close to scoring a couple of times.

After that, each attempt with the man advantage got a little bit worse, culminating in a 26-second 5v3 where they controlled the puck but only managed one shot attempt. It just wasn’t very good the longer the game went on.

It wasn’t an awful night or anything, but against the caliber of team that is San Jose, you’d like to see them cash one of those chances.

Jonathan Drouin

Drouin is going to go through some of these types of nights where things aren’t really working offensively and he needs to find another way to impact the game. He made a ghastly series of decisions in the second period that contributed to the Kunin breakaway and was ultimately pulled off of Colorado’s top line as the third period wore on.

I’m not going to pin all of Colorado’s top line defensive problems on Drouin because both MacKinnon and Rantanen certainly contributed but this is an area where Drouin is going to be under scrutiny next to those guys and he struggled quite a bit.

There were some shaky defensive moments in the Kings game so we’re off to the kind of start that will justify the concerns of the doubters but there have been enough positive offensive moments to believe he’s going to be fine. This is still a major adjustment for him and I think he’s finding his way and all of that. Still, he was one of the skaters that jumped off the ice to me in the bad way.

Unsung Hero

Miles Wood

A night like tonight makes it very easy to see what the Avalanche loved about Wood to make him one of their key pieces to the offseason. His speed caused problems on the forecheck for the Sharks all night and his physicality seemed to really wear on some of the San Jose players throughout the game.

That kind of tenacity with just enough skill created the kind of menace that the Avs were looking for from Wood and his impact was noticeable.

Fredrik Olofsson

Clearly I’m giving some love to the depth guys here but I loved Olofsson’s game. Part of his appeal for the Avalanche was his versatility and when play has actually begun, it’s easy to see why as he’s both physical, skates well and plays a smart game. He was involved in a number of quality plays and he is continuing to earn the trust of the coaching staff with a solid game like this one.

An area that I do have concerns about, however, is the faceoff circle. It’s fine for Nathan MacKinnon to be abysmal at faceoffs because he is so dynamite elsewhere but your fourth-line center has to be able to handle some draws. He won only two of nine draws against the Kings and then won zero on five tries tonight and overall is just 1-for-9 on faceoffs in the defensive zone. It’s a small thing, especially given the situational importance of faceoffs, but an area I’ll keep an eye on moving forward.