Avs Game 37 Studs & Duds: Messy night in Vancouver

/waves

Back to try this again. I took in a lot of the feedback and have decided I’ll try to add in an “Unsung Hero” type of thing for guys who typically get overlooked but so that a depth guy (or more!) gets some love along the way.

Those who hated the format and just want their grades back are out of luck, at least for now. We’re going to try this for a few games. Going to be a few more duds than studs tonight.

Studs

Alexandar Georgiev

I felt bad for Georgiev, who was halfway to a shutout and was playing quite well before the wheels came off on the team in front of him. The Avs melted down and couldn’t stop bleeding chances for the final few minutes of the second period and Georgiev paid the price.

In a rare display of emotion, after the unbelievable turnover by Devon Toews led to Vancouver’s third goal in about three minutes, Georgiev smashed his stick over the crossbar and had to be calmed down by Cale Makar. It was nice to see somebody outwardly caring that things were going south so quickly.

The final box score says Georgiev had 39 saves on 42 shots but that can’t be correct with four goals scored, so we’ll just say he had nearly 40 saves on the night as the team allowed an unacceptable 23 high-danger chances. Georgiev kept this from getting out of hand.

Colorado’s top line

Lehkonen-MacKinnon-Rantanen were two of the three point-getters on Rantanen’s first-period goal (Lehkonen the other) but the three combined for 17 shots on goal and 35 shot attempts. Of Colorado’s 35 scoring chances, this trio produced 22 of them. That they only scored one goal in the game is a continuation of the finishing problems they’ve had since the start of December (honestly, most of the year).

You couldn’t ask for too much more on offense from these guys. They are doing absolutely everything they can and not getting very much help along the way. It’s tough to see them producing an astronomical number of scoring chances in a game like this and come up empty at 5v5.

Collectively, the trio was dominant in shot attempts and scoring chances at 5v5 but couldn’t finish. Rantanen’s goal was on a power play. For the other lines, you’re just asking them to generate chances. This group, however, simply has to finish at a higher rate than they have been, especially if injuries will continue for many more games.

Duds

Colorado’s netfront defense

First of all, look at this heatmap!

What the hell is Colorado doing to Alexandar Georgiev? This is unacceptable defense for a team of Colorado’s caliber. You can’t even pick out your personal favorite in the blame game because it was a team effort. Look at this foolishness.

That’s three different defensemen (Englund, Girard, Toews) making serious errors right around their own net. In the case of Girard and Toews, they fail to identify the loose Canucks player until it is way too late. Englund looked confused by the switch with Girard out high and just lets Kuzmenko walk in completely uncontested until it’s too late to change the outcome.

The third one is the one that really kills me because Toews makes such an awful play with the puck initially. He recognizes he has Logan O’Connor but tries to go into his body, ignoring LOC’s momentum and the open space he could put the puck into. At very worst, Toews would have been putting LOC into a puck battle along the wall as the Canucks player was collapsing in from the point.

Instead, Toews does the unthinkable and tries to force the puck back into the middle of the ice. Baffling, brutally bad hockey.

Composure

For the second time in the last week, Andrew Cogliano made the kind of mistake you simply wouldn’t expect from a veteran leader of his ilk. Last week, he helped spark the Kings’ third period comeback when he lifted a puck that would’ve been called for Delay of Game had Brad Hunt not bailed him out by reaching up with his stick and batting it down for an interference call of his own. Los Angeles scored on the subsequent power play and the comeback was on.

Tonight, Cogliano failed to get a puck out of the zone on the penalty kill as it smacked into the official and stayed in the zone. I’m not really putting that on Cogliano (see below), but him immediately being called for a misconduct for abuse of officials is unacceptable behavior for him. He just has to know he can’t be putting his team any further behind the eight ball, especially with Denis Malgin already out of the game with injury. It put the Avs down to 10 forwards as they lost the lead and then shifted into trying to spark a comeback of their own.

From the Avs as a whole, it’s nothing short of disappointing that nobody on that bench seemed inspired enough to try to stem the tide of a game that was actively slipping away from them. Instead, their best players went out and actually made it a little worse. This is not the same mentally sturdy team we saw a year ago who could take games they were in control of and make them competitive with brain-dead hockey. Exactly like tonight, except then they’d mount a furious rally of their own and refuse to lose.

They more or less laid down and just accepted their fate tonight. That isn’t what you want to see.

From Jared Bednar’s perspective, this has always been a thing that has bothered me about how Bednar runs his bench. He trusts his team to fight through adversity and I’ve always respected that about his approach, but sometimes it sure feels obvious that a game is getting away from them and a timeout to just re-focus his team and calm them down a bit might do some real good. After the second Vancouver goal was the perfect time to try to batten down the hatches.

What is happening here?

It’s always murky territory to bring up officiating because it seems to overshadow every other criticism a person might have of a losing hockey team, but I’m doing it anyway. It’s not the questionable icing call on Toews, but rather the positioning on the failed Cogliano clear that really stood out to me.

Here are a few examples of situations when teams either attempted or feigned an attempt at rimming the puck around the boards. Watch how the official consistently leaves space for this to happen.

On the Cogliano clearing attempt, however, you see the official do the opposite. He braces himself against the wall despite having plenty of room to skate away from the wall without impeding play at all.

Ultimately, Cogliano’s decision clearly caught the official off-guard and ended up hitting him. I don’t think the official thought Cogliano was going to do that or else he’d have gotten out of the way. It was a split-second decision by both player and ref, and I think the ref just chose the wrong route. Easy to say from my seat, of course, but here’s the video of it again.

He just doesn’t make any meaningful attempt to stay out of the play. In the first clip, you saw him actively reading the ice and dipping through the traffic of players to avoid being part of the action. Here, he does nothing and, unfortunately, it cost the Avs.

To me, it’s a mistake, but it isn’t a hill I’ll die on.

Brad Hunt

Over the last five games, Hunt’s highest time on ice is 13:01. Despite that limitation, tonight was the third time he’s been called for a penalty in those games. I mentioned above that one of them was in an attempt to bail out Cogliano and was probably a smart move given Cogliano’s role on the penalty kill, but it’s become a pattern recently.

In the two games Hunt hasn’t been penalized, he’s been on the ice for three goals against.

Tonight was another penalty despite playing just 9:09. That is far too much negative action on the ice when you’re playing as little as Hunt is.

Devon Toews

For obvious reasons, so I won’t spend a lot of reasons digging into this. If you’ve watched the videos above, you’ll understand why. Look, execution errors happen to everyone. Outside of Cale Makar, every other player in NHL history has been proven to be human (Makar is just pretending; he alien). Toews is no different.

The play that really kills me is the icing. I still think it should be icing given how linesmen consistently call this play, but I’ve also advocated for harsher treatment of players tracking back to icing situations too lazily. It doesn’t get much lazier than this from Toews.

I left the entire play in so you can see how this goes entirely wrong for Toews. He doesn’t take it seriously enough, loses the footrace, then the puck battle, then chases the player up the wall and takes a meaningless penalty that had no benefit.

Compounding mistake on top of mistake like that is very rare from Devon Toews. Seeing it happen that quickly in one shift is one thing, but considering the mistakes later on? An unexpected culprit for the failures on the evening.

Unsung Hero

Darren Helm

He finished with a -2 and had negative shot share, so naturally I’m giving him love here. I imagine that’s what this section will turn into a lot of times.

A lot of you asked about Helm after the last game and I didn’t think he did a lot. Tonight, that was a different story. Watch this PK shift from the first period.

It starts off with Helm winning the faceoff, which leads to a clean clearing attempt. Helm then gets up and supports Logan O’Connor’s attempts at stirring up some trouble at the other end of the ice. Nothing came of it, but he was as LOC’s on-ice emotional support dad.

Once back in the defensive zone, Helm goes again to support a teammate, this time Toews in a board battle. The prolonged battle ends in Vancouver getting control of the puck, but the hard work that went into it has a wear-and-tear effect on the Canucks forwards.

Helm then pressures the puck out at the blueline, forcing the puck carrier down low into a low-quality shot. Erik Johnson gets the puck and pushes it up the boards where Helm can’t get to it. Helm tracks the play, however, knowing the Canucks have nobody back high in the zone on that side of the ice anymore.

The Canucks tried a little hand-off and Helm just runs into the guy and steals the puck and clears it. Perfect PK work.

Here’s another Helm PK shift later in the game.

Another won faceoff that leads to a clear. This shift ends with Helm nearly getting a breakaway scoring chance and being tripped by Vancouver goaltender Collin Delia. It should’ve drawn a penalty, but alas went unnoticed.

If only Helm had kept that move around Oliver Ekman-Larsson going and tied the game. Still, great attempt that should’ve resulted in a drawn penalty. Tough break, but great hard work again from Helm.

Then, some good puck luck for Helm and the Avs.

Helm again didn’t finish, which is the story of the Avs right now, but you have to appreciate how involved he got. His return to the lineup is a welcome addition to Colorado’s bottom six.