Avs fall flat on their face in blowout loss to Minnesota Wild

Colorado’s 15-game point streak (13-0-2 in that run) came to an end tonight in spectacular fashion as a clearly tired Avalanche team made predictable mental mistakes and they got crushed in the special teams department in an 8-3 loss to the Minnesota Wild.

You can’t even lean on the familiar villain of Colorado’s losses, the backup goaltender, as Philipp Grubauer was in the net for seven goals against on just 18 shots on goal for a cool .611 save percentage.

At least it was interesting for a little while.

The Wild were all over the Avs early and often as they built a 3-0 lead in the first period, then watched it go from 4-1 to 4-3 in the second period.

Once the Avs were back in it, Colorado’s penalty kill betrayed all of the positive work their even-strength play had put in and just a few minutes into the third period, it was 8-3 and the rout was on.

Minnesota’s power play scored four goals on five chances and while the Avs got two of their own on the man advantage, you just cannot get killed on the PK like that against the second-worst PP in the NHL.

In fact, Colorado giving up six power-play goals across two games to the Wild is both a sign of the inevitable regression from a penalty kill that has played over its head for much of the season and also an area of concern for the front office to monitor as they inch closer to next week’s trade deadline.

Overall, this was the game that went entirely against the Avalanche. They played poorly, making mental mistakes all over the ice, and combined it with lackluster energy and no sense of urgency whatsoever.

It’s not hard to understand why it happened. It’s more or less the game we’ve been expecting to see from the Avs at some point. They’re an exhausted group that hasn’t had consecutive days off since before the February 20 game at Lake Tahoe.

They’re barely practicing, which is certainly a concern when you have a unit showing the cracks that the penalty kill is right now, and head coach Jared Bednar is arguably overplaying his best players, from Grubauer in net to without a doubt Colorado’s top three defenders.

If there was a positive takeaway from any of this, it’s that Colorado got to rest some of their guys once the game was decided early in the third period. It’s not much of a consolation prize but in a game where you get your ass kicked like the Avs did tonight, you take the crumbs available to you.

I suppose the other positive in this one is that the Avs appear to have come out of the game without any additional injuries, which is a nice little change of pace for them.

They finish their season series against the Wild 5-2-1 and currently hold all of the tiebreakers used in the standings at the end of the year. With the Avs still up six points on the Wild, they may not even need them.

For tonight, though, a blowout loss, their third of the season and second to Minnesota. The Avs travel to Anaheim to continue their road trip as they finish off their season series with the Ducks this weekend.

TAKEAWAYS

• This is in no way a criticism or picking on the guy, I just found it amazing scanning the box score after the game that Jonas Johansson faced one shot, gave up one goal, and made zero saves in nearly 13 minutes of action tonight. Even when they’re getting blown out, the Avs don’t give up much in the way of shots on goal.
• Let’s talk Grubauer. This one is complicated because I thought several of the goals were pretty unspectacular overall and had it been Johansson in net, people wouldn’t have been working so hard to excuse the poor play. He’s been awesome this year. Stinkers are going to happen for every goalie. Tonight was definitely that for Grubauer. He looked exhausted, like many of his teammates, as his puck-tracking especially was slow. That’s a hallmark sign of a fatigued goaltender and I think it all just caught up with him tonight. That said, he definitely was left hanging on some very high-quality scoring chances. I don’t care how ugly a turnover it was from Devon Toews, however, because the man pushing for a Vezina and the linchpin to your entire Cup run can’t be getting beat cleanly by Ryan Hartman and Luke Johnson. It’s one thing if Kevin Fiala and Kirill Kaprizov are stunting on you (they also did tonight), but those guys are another story. Quality chances, no doubt, but hardly any of the goals were particularly special plays or shots. Grubauer just wasn’t very good behind a team that also wasn’t very good. That’s a good recipe for a blowout.
• Nathan MacKinnon remains on a different level. He’s so good.
• I’ve been writing about usage in this space for the last several games and tonight I think it was time to pay the piper. Bednar was relying heavily on his top defenders and they looked spent physically and mentally as they made uncharacteristically poor mental errors as well as racked up execution issues.
• I think this coming just days before the trade deadline is good for the Avalanche front office. They get to see the cracks for what they are and while this is won’t be the norm from the team, seeing their floor exposed as badly as it was tonight is healthy for their assessment of the club. Definitely need more defense. Definitely need another goaltender. Maybe even a second defender just in case. Forwards look pretty good, however, if they were more willing to dig into their actual prospects and not has-beens (I’m not revisiting this in-depth again). Failure sucks but it is oftentimes a superior teacher of lessons that need to be learned. The amount of success suggests major changes are not necessary. This type of failure, and the obvious warning signs leading up to it, suggest clear-cut problems that happen to have reasonable solutions. There I go, getting optimistic again.