Avs Game 36 Grades: Making a change

Hi, friends!

As you know, Evan Rawal recently made the departure from DNVR over to a full-time gig covering the Avalanche at Colorado Hockey Now. He’s been our resident Avalanche grades writer for the last few years, so with him leaving we decided we wanted to try some different things out.

After years of grading every player, we’ve come to understand that there is a lot of wasted energy every night on players who simply don’t play a major role in the outcome of games. Not good, not bad, but guys who just don’t have much of an impact. Instead of trying to assign value to those players, we decided we wanted a space to focus a little more on the players/units/coaches who made the biggest impact on each game.

With that in mind, tonight is the first night of us trying out the grades as “Studs and Duds” instead of straight grades for every player. Feedback is always important on this, so if y’all absolutely hate it and want us to go back to just grades, please let us know! I will ask that you give it a few games to see how you like the change(s) before dismissing the new format(s).

Me being me, I’d like to incorporate some video work and some stat stuff into this piece if possible. Again, it’s important to stress that if this just isn’t your thing but you love grades, let us know! We want to try a fresh approach, but also don’t want to force content you aren’t interested in.

Studs

Artturi Lehkonen

Lehkonen was is a jack-of-all-trades type on Colorado’s top line and his full arsenal of skills was on display tonight. In the video below, you’ll see Lehkonen create problems for Vegas with his ability to move pucks along the wall, move pucks in space, forecheck the hell out of defensemen who don’t make quick decisions, and simply outwork opposing players.

His one lacking element is his ability to score goals, which is all relative. He has nine goals this year and finished with a career-high 19 last season. He’s clearly capable, it’s just not a shining strength of his, as you’ll see below where he had two chances right around the crease and couldn’t finish either.

Ultimately, Lehkonen’s disruptive presence led to two assists and two very-near goals. While it feels like not much has gone right this year for the Avs, Lehkonen’s 62-point pace for just $4.5M is one of their definitive wins so far.

Nathan MacKinnon

He scored just 25 seconds into the game and added an assist on Colorado’s second goal. He was actively involved in a ton of Colorado’s scoring chances and his zone entries injected badly-needed life into a lagging Avalanche power play.

It was a two-point night for MacKinnon that felt like it wasn’t far from being more like a five-point night. He should’ve had an assist in the first period on a two-on-one where Mikko Rantanen had Logan Thompson beat cleanly but hit the post instead. He also could have had an assist on a puck that hopped on Lehkonen on the backdoor (see the video above).

It was the kind of night where Colorado came up short and it felt like Vegas simply survived the wrath of Nathan MacKinnon’s brilliance. He even added an excellent backcheck on what might have been a clean breakaway without his intervention.

Alexandar Georgiev

He gave up three goals, but two of them were off excellent tip plays that he couldn’t do anything about. The other goal was Nicolas Roy’s goal that came immediately after officials missed Brad Hunt taking a stick to the face and then going to retrieve his stick. I’d probably like a save on the shot, but it’s hard to stop NHL players from that spot when there is no coverage.

Other than the goals, Georgiev consistently kept Colorado in the game. He stopped multiple breakaways when the Avs either made egregious errors or got caught pressing too hard late in the game. Either way, Georgiev did his job in giving the Avs a chance to mount a comeback.

His puck tracking looked much better than last week and overall this was the kind of performance that you want to see from him more often than not. The tips can’t really be held against him, but he rose to the occasion on the shot attempts he could do more with.

Martin Kaut

Okay, this is where I know some of you are going to roll your eyes, but hear me out. When we’re talking about judging player performance, it’s all relative. The Avs aren’t asking Kaut to do what MacKinnon does, they’re simply asking him to do little things well in his limited ice time.

Kaut played just 7:00 tonight but did enough good things to earn extra shifts in the third period with various linemates (one combination was Lehkonen-Compher-Kaut, for example). I’ve put together three shifts from the game that show him having an impact on the play in some form.

All of his success starts with his skating, which has rarely been a weapon for him at the NHL level. You watch those shifts, however, and you see he aggressively attacks a puck carrier who retreated to his own zone and forced it to reload where Kaut got help. The Avs won that puck in the neutral zone. Ultimately the shift ends up as nothing, but you see where it’s the little things.

From there, Kaut wins a footrace to negate icing, then is one of the first forwards back to defend. The shift ends after a Kaut shot on goal turned into a rebound and a scoring chance.

The last shift, Kaut again attacks a puck carrier, forces the puck to be reversed, and then draws a penalty.

The final line isn’t overly sexy. Seven minutes played, one shot on goal, two hits, one penalty drawn, but that’s exactly what you’re asking role players to do. For a guy desperate to carve out a spot on this Avalanche team, it should serve as a building block. Was he a “stud” tonight in the traditional sense? Of course not. But there were real positives there.

Duds

Cale Makar

This is where I remind everyone that it’s all relative. Makar played nearly 28 minutes and had two shots on goals. Fine, but he had seven shot attempts and only two of them actually ended up requiring a save. His looks were far too good in this game for him to not get pucks through traffic.

Then you have the clips I put together below. It’s mostly poor puck decisions, but it’s also one really terrible pinch that sees MacKinnon ultimately bail him out when the center hustles back to stop a breakaway from happening.

Makar had some moments tonight, but he also played a big role in some of the best scoring chances for the Golden Knights.

This isn’t to say Makar was solely at fault for everything here. That’s simply not how hockey works, but it does show a player maybe pressing and trying too hard to make a brilliant play because he’s feeling the pressure of losing starting to build on his broad shoulders.

Makar as a human being has assimilated into the NHL with a rarely-seen calm and poise about him. Losing hasn’t dogged him in his career and this is the toughest stretch for the Avs since Makar turned pro.

You can see how much he means to Colorado’s success and when he makes the plays as he did above, some of their failures fall on him, too.

Power Play

Colorado’s power play predictably began struggling a great deal when Nathan MacKinnon went down with an injury. It never really came back online and tonight was MacKinnon’s second game back in action.

The power play went 0/5 despite 13 shot attempts, six that went on net, six scoring chances, and two high-danger chances.

It wasn’t that the power play was incapable of creating opportunities, it was more finishing them off that was lacking. Lehkonen missed two backdoor tap-ins and J.T. Compher smoked one off the post. In the end, the Avs failed to scored on the PP and lost by one goal.

It’s not hard to see the final score and where this unit came up just short tonight. It hasn’t been a group that has had any time to practice together yet, so you hope the next two days between games will help them regain rhythm, but that has to actually happen.

The Avalanche cannot continue losing games because they are losing the special teams battle. Tonight, the penalty kill got the job done. The power play let them down.