Avs' emphatic victory slams the door shut on season series with Ducks

After two lethargic games in a row, the Avalanche rediscovered the mojo that led them on a month-long tear as they easily dispatched the Anaheim Ducks 4-1 in the final game of their season series.

Colorado finishes their eight-game set against the woeful Ducks with a strong 6-1-1 record with their only two losses coming in the John Gibson Game and the Hunter Miska Game. Memories!

Tonight was a slow burn on the scoresheet as the Avs methodically built up a 2-0 lead going into the third period, then watched some nonsense end Jonas Johansson’s shutout streak (hell yeah, JoJo) before dropping two more goals to emphatically end a miserable season against the miserable Ducks.

Johansson was solid if just a touch lucky early on but the only goal he gave up in Anaheim across two games was a terrible break as it was a puck that he was in position to stop until it hit the back of Cale Makar’s leg and deflected into the net. Like I said, nonsense.

The win pushed Johansson’s numbers in Colorado to a sparkling 3-0-1 record with a .929 save percentage and goals-against-average of just 1.87.

In fact, after Johansson’s shaky debut where he gave up four goals to the Arizona Coyotes, he’s given up just four goals in his other four Avalanche appearances.

Offensively, the team was led by Gabe Landeskog, whose three-point night (1 G, 2 A) landed him right at 500 points in his career. His goal came off a deflection of a MacKinnon shot as the Avs actually scored on a five-on-three.

Goals from Andre Burakovsky, Ryan Graves, and MacKinnon rounded out the scoring haul from the Avs tonight.

There isn’t too much to really get into tonight. This was a standard copy and paste kind of victory of a good team feeding a bad team its lunch. It’s exactly what used to happen to the Avs on a regular basis when they rolled into Anaheim during the glory days of the Getzlaf-Perry Ducks.

Now, Getzlaf remains and all his angsty nonsense once again came spilling out after the Avs had regained control of the game as Colorado was putting Anaheim away for good this season. I’m sure he feels high and mighty after the officials let him take punches at three different Avs without penalizing him but the real punishment these days is having to be the face of the Ducks, so it evens out, I suppose.

Anyway, Johansson locked it down and newcomer Devan Dubnyk backed him up as Philipp Grubauer got the entire night off.

The Avs return to Denver to finish off their season series against the Arizona Coyotes tomorrow, the same day as the league’s trade deadline. Stay tuned to see if the Avs engage in any more of the arms race going on around the league.

TAKEAWAYS

• Johansson got an early break when Max Jones botches a two-on-one but otherwise was rock solid again. For the Avs to get two relatively easy victories in Anaheim without Grubauer having to see the ice even once is a major victory in the quest to let Grubauer get some much-needed rest as they approach the postseason.
• Dubnyk has been very charming since arriving in Colorado. We see you, big fella.
• Landeskog getting to 500 points was kind of shocking to me. Milestones always creep up on you but there are fond and vivid memories of Landeskog’s early days as an Av. He has quietly upped his game this year after a slowish start and is the third point-per-game player on Colorado’s top line. Pretty remarkable, that. 500 points has him squarely fifth in Avalanche history as he continues to put distance on Alex Tanguay (488) but it will be a while until he goes anywhere. He has 205 points to go to catch Peter Forsberg’s Avalanche total for third (likely fourth whenever Landeskog reaches it as MacKinnon is 55 points ahead of Landeskog).
• Mikko Rantanen is just two points shy of 300 in his career, something that also feels shocking when you think about how young Rantanen still is.
• Since we’re talking milestones, Cale Makar is just six points shy of taking over 10th place on the defenseman scoring list in Avalanche history. He has played just 86 games.
• It was great to see Burakovsky get the goal tonight. I’ve been tough on him in this space and it was good to see him get one. That line definitely needs a big night, however, as Brandon Saad and Nazem Kadri continue struggling. For his part, Saad spent most of the game next to Tyson Jost on the third line.
• Good for both Jost and Ryan Graves, who got his first goal of the year on a double doink off Anaheim players. He’s ripped a few off posts so it was nice to see him catch a good break. Jost got the assist on a nice controlled zone entry, something he’s doing more and more of as he continues to settle in as 3C.
• Looking forward to spending the day hanging out with everyone tomorrow as we go live for the trade deadline coverage at 10 a.m mountain. See you then!