Avs Game 40 Duds: No studs here

Colorado’s embarrassing, ugly, nearly apathetic 3-2 loss to the Patrick Kane-less Chicago Blackhawks leaves only bitterness in its wake. There are almost no positives to pull from this game except for them leaving the game without an additional injury. So, cheers to that, I suppose.

Studs

The only player worth considering in this category was Evan Rodrigues. He played hard, scored a goal, and looked engaged throughout. A small cookie for ERod.

Duds

The rest of the Colorado Avalanche

There were moments from a few of them. Pavel Francouz certainly wasn’t bad in his first game in a month. Nathan MacKinnon had two points. Cale Makar scored a goal. Alex Newhook had a goal taken away through no fault of his own.

The reality here, however, is that the Avalanche needed to win this hockey game. Losers of six of seven and having gained just three of their last 14 possible points, they’ve gone from being comfortably in the mix in the Central Division to watching the two teams at the top (Dallas and Winnipeg) start to run away from a realistic shot at the Avalanche catching them.

If the top two spots in the Central Division are already out of play (very possible), then the Avs are down to the third seed or two wild card spots to even make the postseason. Colorado will hit its halfway mark in games on Saturday night when Ottawa comes to town, but that conversation just might be their reality right now.

That reality got worse tonight when the Blackhawks, a group assembled with the NHL Draft in mind, outworked and beat the Avalanche.

The analytics look great for Colorado. They had 20 more shot attempts than the Blackhawks did at 5v5. They had more scoring chances and high-danger chances.

But their mistakes were, once again, just too costly for them to overcome. If Colorado isn’t getting production from MacKinnon, Rantanen, Makar, Rodrigues, Lehkonen, or even J.T. Compher, they aren’t getting any offense. There’s nothing happening elsewhere.

That those guys feel the pressure means they are pressing like crazy, overcommitting at times and making brutal mental errors leading to glorious scoring chances (Chicago’s first goal is almost entirely created by Cale Makar not paying attention to anything around him and hastily trying to keep a puck in the offensive zone and then from reaching the center line).

The cracks aren’t just showing, they’re turning into San Francisco after the earthquake of 1989. They looked broken and hopeless at several junctures tonight.

The team that was so committed to playing the game the right way to produce the desired results from last year was nowhere to be found tonight. You could see in their pathetic failed power play attempts they were so desperate to create something positive that they started skipping their tried-and-true processes and trying to cut corners all over the place.

When a team starts cutting those kinds of corners, it has completely lost its way. They cheated themselves of an honest effort because they were trying too hard to make it all go away. There’s a reason that even in the constantly-evolving NHL, nothing beats plain old hard work.

The Avs obviously had more skill than the Blackhawks. The few minutes of this game where Colorado imposed its will and put forth a real effort, they dominated play. They scored goals. They looked engaged.

Those moments were far too fleeting, however, and you watched Makar be on the ice for two of Chicago’s goals against. There was no bagging on Sam Girard tonight; he had nothing to do with Colorado’s goals against in this one. Makar was a spectator in goals one and three while Brad Hunt and Kurtis MacDermid executed the worst line change attempt (they didn’t even complete it!) you’ll ever see that left an exhausted Darren Helm to try to chase down Andreas Athanasiou, one of the NHL’s fastest players.

Francouz needed to be spectacular on each of the goals but couldn’t quite muster the brilliance necessary. He was otherwise totally fine and it would be wildly unfair to place a large amount of blame on his shoulders for this game.

No, this was a team that, in the end, cheated itself. They stopped putting in the work, tried to find shortcuts, and started losing battles all over the ice. That the talent disparity was so large that Colorado still dominated shot metrics despite not putting in an honest night’s work only makes the end result more annoying.

The goaltender interference was the right call in my eyes. It sucks it went against them, but watching Mikko Rantanen go nuclear for the second straight game shows that, right now, this team is so far from the mature, poised, and collected group from last year that was unfazed by the things outside of their control.

This was the ultimate disappointment. If this season turns around from here (still very possible, there are still 42 hockey games remaining, after all), this becomes a blip on the radar. If the Avs really do mess around and miss the postseason, injuries will be a major factor, but it sure as hell won’t be the only one.

Nights like this last one had nothing to do with injuries, and everything to do with a team that doesn’t look like it wants to do the work necessary to get the desired results.

The Power Play

Colorado’s power play is so bad right now, I can’t even call it anemic. It’s completely lifeless. This won’t be a long dissertation on how things are messed up right now, but rather a couple of numbers really succinctly sum up how bad it was against the Blackhawks.

In six minutes of power play time, the Blackhawks produced the following results:

• 11 shots attempts for, 0 against
• 7 shots on goal, 0 against
• 8 scoring chances, 0 against
• 4 high-danger chances, 0 against
• 0 goals

In 10 minutes of power play time, including a four-minute double-minor in the first period, the Avalanche produced the following results:

• 8 shot attempts for, 5 against
• 5 shots on goal, 4 against
• 3 scoring chances for, 3 scoring chances against
• 3 high-danger chances for, 1 high-danger chance against
• 0 goals

Not only did Colorado fail to score in 10 minutes of time with an extra attacker against the awful Blackhawks, they barely broke even. They barely won the battle for SOG in 10 minutes of power-play time.

There’s no word to apply here other than pathetic. It was an embarrassing performance. There is no need for video to show how awful it was. Those numbers should adequately describe the failures of Colorado tonight. Can’t even clearly handle business with more players on the ice? Against this Chicago team?

Unbelievably disappointing performance. The kind that calls into serious question whether or not this team can pull itself out of the doldrums and regain the form that made them so special not that long ago.