Avs-Flames Game 28 Studs & Duds

Studs

Tomas Tatar

Scoreless through the first 27 games (Tatar played in 26 of them), a guy who had scored 211 goals in his NHL career finally broke through from a terrible dry spell to start his Avalanche career. He made a nice finish in front of the net on a great play from Ross Colton. Good finish, the exact kind of thing that has been missing from his game.

Ross Colton

A monster night for Colton, who had two points (one goal, one assist), two drawn penalties, three hits and two shots on goal. All of that in just 11:28 of ice time. That’s a pretty efficient night and a whole lot of good.

That kind of physical presence (his huge hit on Chris Tanev on the first shift of the game drew a penalty when the Flames overreacted to a clean hit because Tanev was unfortunately hurt) helps set a tone and I think it played a part in a strong opening period for the Avalanche.

Also, look at his work in helping set up Tatar’s goal.

Colton plays a nice game of give-and-go down low with Fredrik Olofsson, then stickhandles away from trouble and moves it back to Olofsson, who cycles it back to him. Colton then sucks in both Calgary defenders with his body positioning.

His skates as he starts going behind the net are pointed in front of him, so Rasmus Andersson heads over there to defend him. As he sees the defense drawing him in, he changes his body positioning to make a quality pass and he finds Tatar alone in a sea of Flames. It’s the perfect play.

His third-period goal really kickstarted Colorado’s comeback for realsies. He flubbed the shot a bit and was lucky to even get the opportunity, but capitalizing on chances is the name of the game in hockey. You don’t apologize for success and Colton had plenty of it.

Did you know that Colton is on pace for a 23-goal, 41-point season? Solid start to his Avalanche career.

Mikko Rantanen

This is a guy that I’ve written a ton about lately and he was, well, a moose tonight. Jared Bednar called him a “horse” after the game but it did his star forward a disservice. He was a full-blown moose.

Rantanen had the silly turnover that led to Calgary’s first goal, but also, like, you probably need a save there. He was working hard and building to the breakthrough through two periods but the top line was getting crushed with the goals against. All of them had issues.

The third period started, however, and Colorado’s stars came alive. Cale Makar and Nathan MacKinnon had great moments, but this was a game that was crying out for Mikko Rantanen to make a game-changing play.

At 5-4, that play finally came. Was it the vintage Mikko Rantanen snipe that beats the goalie? It was not. As we’ve become fond of saying on the podcast, however, Rantanen wanted pizza so he went to Pizza Hut. Meaning he wanted a goal and went to the front of the net to get it. Is the goal itself going on Rantanen’s career highlight reel? No. He barely gets a stick on it, but that isn’t what I loved.

This is.

Rantanen is fighting hard for position in front of the net and the spin move he puts on former Av Dennis Gilbert is the kind of thing you normally see pass rushers in football do to offensive linemen. Then he outworks everyone else and gets a stick on the puck just enough to get it to go in. That’s not talent, it’s just plain old hard work.

Rantanen later made the outlet pass up the ice to Val Nichushkin for the game-winning goal.

He finished the game with three points (one goal, two assists), eight shots on goal, 19 shot attempts, and 12 scoring chances (stick taps to Dimitri Filipovic for the numbers). That’s a guy that was dying to get that goal so we could all stop talking about it. Then his postgame comments ensured we weren’t talking about it at all anymore.

Third period Avs

Once again, the third period is where you see the Avs eat greedy. You’d like to see them not enter it down two goals, but their work ethic and quality of play through two periods suggested this was a team that was having a night that could still go differently if they put together a solid stretch of play without any of the silliness.

They got an incredible bounce on the Ross Colton goal but Colton capitalized and there was no way the Avs were losing after that. The top guys turned on the afterburners and left the Flames in the dust from there. I mean, what even are the Flames doing here?

My best guess is that Noah Hanifin is expecting MacKenzie Weegar to be back there to help, but he is with Nichushkin instead. The far-side forward in Blake Coleman also does absolutely nothing to help Hanifin and neither player realizes they are in trouble until way, way too late. It’s a shockingly bad read from Hanifin, who steps up when Makar swings the puck around to Rantanen. Mikael Backlund is slow to get there, but Hanifin never has a chance to make a play and MacKinnon dusts them both. We may not see a worse read all year than that from Hanifin. Also Coleman.

Anyway, the Avs scored three goals and were awesome in the third period of this game.

Duds

Colorado’s top D pair

Devon Toews and Cale Makar do an awful lot of good across an 82-game season that nights like this are hard to watch. They struggled mightily with each player making awful decisions and executing poorly.

Toews sets Rantanen up for failure with a terrible cross-ice pass that Rantanen then flubbed and turned over on the first Calgary goal. Toews also lost the bouncy puck battle on the fourth Calgary goal. Then Makar got caught puck-watching and didn’t bother covering his man on the backdoor on Calgary’s fifth goal.

It’s not a huge surprise that they got split up for much of the third period. Makar came back to life and started contributing offensively while Toews did not. It’s not often you look at these guys together and think “What is happening?” but they were a mess.

Second period Avs

At 5v5, the Avs gave up 14 high-danger scoring chances. Nine of them came in the second period, where the Avs gave up four goals. That is both a testament to their quality in the other two periods but also to the bad lapses that happened in the second period. They didn’t even give up that many scoring chances overall, but the ones they did allow were of the highest caliber and several of them went into the net.

Colorado had outplayed Calgary in the first period and walked in tied 1-1 and had to feel a little dejected about the result but should have felt great about their process. The second period was similar to the Flyers game two days ago in that they got down and allowed things to start to get away from them a bit. Despite taking a 2-1 lead early on in the frame, they left trailing 5-3. That’s putting yourself in quite a hole.

There were defensive lapses, weird puck bounces, and questionable goaltending. Adversity is life’s greatest teacher and Colorado just did not handle themselves very well in the period.

Alexandar Georgiev

As always, it’s not entirely on Georgiev that he let five goals get by him on just 21 shots but that is absolutely not good enough. He hasn’t had a prolonged period of quality period of play to point to to dismiss this as not worrisome. He also isn’t squarely in the crosshairs of every goal against, but you’re asking him to have at least one of those (Coleman’s goal is a total muffin) and probably two. It wasn’t a good enough night from Georgiev.

As soon as Ivan Prosvetov came in and passed the test of simply stopping the first shot, the Avs handled the rest from there. That remained true even after Colorado took the lead in the third period and Calgary made their late-game push with the extra attacker. Make the first save and go from there. That was all the Avs needed to close it out and Prosvetov proved capable where Georgiev did not.

Unsung Hero

Colorado’s fourth line

I’ve been critical of the fourth line recently and for good reason. Between getting scored on and taking penalties, they have been putting the Avalanche in too many holes lately. Fredrik Olofsson was a healthy scratch two games ago to try to light a fire and send a message that his recent form was not good enough.

He drew back into the lineup tonight alongside Ben Meyers as they replaced Joel Kiviranta (illness) and Kurtis MacDermid (healthy scratch) in the lineup. Andrew Cogliano remained the steadying force on that line.

Pretty good night for that trio!

In the 5:03 of 5v5 time they played together, they outshot the Flames 5-0 and had a 3-1 advantage in scoring chances. Olofsson made the play with Colton on Colorado’s first goal and had an assist and then Cogliano later made a centering feed to Ben Meyers and Meyers sniped one past Dan Vladar (Sam Malinski was also instrumental in the play).

Fourth lines in the NHL are usually about energy, physicality, and defensive acumen. All three players recording a point and helping to create two separate goals? That’s a coach’s dream. They handled business. I wonder how Meyers did in the eyes of the coaching staff in his call-up. If Kiviranta is available on Wednesday night, will he automatically return to the lineup or will this trio get another shot?

They were good enough to justify it.

Bowen Byram

His numbers tonight were dominant. In 20:04 of 5v5 time, Byram had a 19-9 shot advantage with a 19-7 advantage in scoring chances and 8-4 advantage in high-danger chances. Goals were also 4-2, so it is fair to say this was a very high-event game for Byram.

Byram also added an assist and was extremely close to having two (Rantanen’s goal was originally credited with a second assist to Byram but later changed to Nichushkin because Nichushkin slightly nicked the puck on the way to the net, but it was Byram who started the play in the offensive zone with his drop pass to Makar.).

When Makar and Toews got broken apart in the third period, it was Byram that Bednar turned to in order to help stabilize his superstar. It worked and the two played 5:49 of 5v5 time together and the Avs outshot the Flames 8-4 and had a 9-3 scoring chance advantage in their tenure together throughout the game.

As the Sam Girard absence wears on and the pairing of Byram and Makar starts working here and there, I am once again wondering if they try to make a Byram-Makar Toews-Manson grouping on defense work more often. It’s justifiable to go with Toews-Makar because they have worked at an extremely high level for years, but Byram is taking on more and more responsibility and starting to really respond positively.

Food for thought. Again.