The Colorado Avalanche began a four-game road trip tonight out east in Philadelphia against the Flyers. It went well enough as the Avs prevailed, 3-2, in a strange game marked by an official being hurt early in the game and getting taken away on a stretcher (early returns are positive and he is doing well at the hospital).

With that injury, it meant Jean Hebert was the lone official on the ice tonight and that ended up playing a pivotal role later in the game as a parade of iffy penalties changed the dynamic quite a bit.

The game also got a game-changing presence when Cale Makar decided to take it over in the second period as he scored three straight goals. The first was undisputed and vintage Makar as he worked himself into open ice while the Flyers were double-teaming Nathan MacKinnon and MacKinnon found Makar, who wristed it across his body and past Igor Kolosov for the 1-0 lead at 8:30 of the second period.

Shortly after, Makar scored again in a similar fashion from MacKinnon, but the Flyers challenged for goaltender interference and won, taking Makar’s two-goal period away.

The hockey gods love Cale Makar, so they gave it back to him later when Makar was trying to find Mikko Rantanen down low with a pass but the puck deflected off two Flyers’ skates and into the net. The Avalanche were up 2-0 on Makar goals going into the second intermission.

The third period got wild as penalties all over the place repeatedly changed the situation. 4:41 into the frame, MacKinnon was called for two penalties at the same time as Hebert hit with him a Tripping charge and when MacKinnon whined about it, gave him an Unsportsmanlike Conduct right with it.

That put the Flyers on a four-minute power play that was interrupted when the Flyers were called for two penalties of their own. Casey Mittelstadt scored at the end of all of that so it didn’t count as a power-play goal, but it was in spirit.

The Flyers finally cracked the Justus Annunen code with two soft goals within two minutes of each other to change the tone from a 3-0 runaway to a one-goal affair.

The Avalanche ultimately held on for the win.

Here’s the flow of the game in shots:

And here’s the heatmap of where the shots came from:

Avalanche observations

• It was a tough ask for Hebert to call the game solo tonight, but it really shows how hard it is to see everything going on as one referee. He struggled with it and I had issues with most of the calls made. The two high-sticking calls were the easy ones that weren’t disputable, but the others I’m not sure would have been called with both guys available.
• The call that did get made that I agreed with was the goaltender interference call that wiped away Makar’s (first) second goal. Jonathan Drouin sets up shop inside the crease without anyone touching him. He remained there as Kolosov moved out to the top of his crease. Even though Drouin didn’t move, he was in the ice that Kolosov was entitled to. Had Drouin had his skates outside the blue paint and the same contact occurred, the goal would have stood. This was an easy call, I think. You can stand in the crease and not touch anyone but when the goalie can’t get to ice inside the crease, it stops being an innocent act. It’s the least active goalie interference you’ll ever see, but I think it was the right call.
• Anyway, Makar was incredible tonight. I wrote after the last game that I thought he was Colorado’s best offensive player and deserved a better fate than a zero-point night, but he had 12 shot attempts and five scoring chances of his own in this game. He added three blocked shots for a complete effort. His defensive effort on the odd-man rush created when Makar’s stick broke on the power play was key. He forced the Flyers to make a tighter passing play than would have been expected without Makar’s work. Good work that began from some tough luck.
• I think both goals against Justus Annunen were bad goals, but the overall body of work was solid. It’s tough to get too upset about giving up only two goals on 26 shots after the kind of goaltending the Avs have had this season. For Annunen, he went from an excellent response to a disastrous game against Washington to a merely solid outing. A little shaky for a couple of minutes, but everyone locked it down late.
• Colorado’s overall level of play was pretty solid and consistent. They were dominating this game until the Owen Tippett goal that made it 3-1. It’s why bad goals really hurt. The team is doing everything right and a soft goal gets in and both teams get in their feels. Colorado’s feels were, “Oh no, here we go again” and the Flyers’ feels were, “Now we’re going again.” It kicked open the end-of-game push the Flyers made.
• The Avs have a clear delineation between top and bottom-six forwards now, so I’m a little miffed at how Casey Mittelstadt only played 14:31 and Parker Kelly played 14:42. I know Kelly was on the ice at the end of the game on a shift that ended up lasting 1:40, but Mittelstadt only took three shifts in the final 10 minutes of the third period. Jared Bednar needs to get comfortable with his new second line late in games. Trying to treat Kelly like an ace checking center who is smothering games feels like a recipe for disaster, even if his linemates were Logan O’Connor and Joel Kiviranta. Those just aren’t the guys you want trying to stop the opposing team’s final pushes at the end of games. It’s one thing to cut the bench short and stop playing the fourth line, but removing your second-line center from the rotation isn’t great. In my opinion, anyway. Hopefully, this isn’t the start of a trend.
• Loved the Flyers allowing multiple Avs to be incorporated into the celebration of Erik Johnson reaching 1,000 NHL games last week. Seeing the love between EJ and Gabe Landeskog takes me back to a different time, but it was a classy move on Philadelphia’s part to let that happen.