Coming off the bye week, the Colorado Avalanche were upbeat coming into tonight’s matchup against the Anaheim Ducks. Fresh off their win against the New York Islanders in their last appearance, the Avalanche felt like things could start going their way to start off the second half of the season.
Reality failed to live up to those expectations, however, as the Avs fell 4-1 to the Ducks in a game the Ducks led throughout. The lone bright spot for the Avalanche was Nathan MacKinnon, who was named an All-Star for the first time in his career during the bye week, and his linemates, Mikko Rantanen and Gabriel Landeskog.
That trio helped propel the Avalanche to a great start, jumping out to a 5-1 lead in shots on goal in the first several minutes. Things went downhill from there, however, as they tend to do for the enigmatic Avalanche.
“I thought we had a good first period, the first half,” MacKinnon said. “A good second but we just [shot] ourselves in the foot like we usually do, so it’s frustrating.”
MacKinnon scored Colorado’s lone goal at 5:24 of the first period when he burst through center ice, stole the puck from a pack of three Ducks players and left them in his wake as he broke in alone in goaltender John Gibson, beating him with a backhand shot as Gibson helplessly fell on his stomach while attempting to stop the shot. At the time, it brought the game to a 1-1 tie.
The goal was no comfort after yet another loss, Colorado’s league-leading 15th loss at home.
“Our work ethic was there,” MacKinnon explained. “I thought we had some good looks. At the same time, we still gave up four. You’re not going to win when you give up four, especially when you score two goals a game or one tonight.”
That the Avalanche only scored once on 34 shots on goal was both a testament to how well Gibson played and the need for improvement in the chances being generated by Colorado. That said, it wasn’t as if Colorado’s top line was struggling to generate opportunities. The trio combined for 12 of Colorado’s shots on goal with MacKinnon leading the way with six on his own.
“I think we could have had more than one tonight,” MacKinnon admitted. “I thought we had a really good game. We had tons of shots, everybody was moving, I think our legs felt great. Obviously, it would be nice to get a couple more but the chances were there for sure.”
Given the long layoff in between games, there was naturally a question as to how the bye week impacted Colorado. According to MacKinnon, it was a virtual non-factor for Colorado’s top guns.
“I didn’t think it was too bad. I was talking with Gabe and Mikko and we all felt good. Our legs felt great. We all took it easy on our break just trying to get ready for the second half. Physically, it was good. A little bit of rust maybe on some plays but overall we felt pretty good.”
The results seemed to echo his sentiments as the line was the only one to go positive in Corsi For on the night with Landeskog leading the way with 19 Corsi For and just 10 Corsi Against. Even more impressive, those results came with the line matched up against Anaheim’s top defensive forward line, led by Ryan Kesler, and their top two defensive pairings.
At the end of the day, despite all of the positive things Colorado’s top line did, it only produced one goal, an unassisted one at that. There’s definitely a building frustration as the group tries to stay positive and believe the results will come if they continue to trust the process of Jared Bednar’s systems.
“It’s tough,” MacKinnon said with a hollow chuckle. “We’re trying. It’s just how it’s going and, hopefully, it changes. We can build from something like that, the amount of chances we had. We just have to focus on the process of getting chances. You can’t think too much when you get it. You just shoot it and, hopefully, pick a corner and they’ll start going in eventually.”
Eventually. The perfect word for a team whose season is long lost and somehow only half over.
