Avs Game 62 Studs & Duds: Shark bait ooh ha ha

Studs

Colorado’s stars

Nathan MacKinnon, Mikko Rantanen, and Cale Makar all rolled into this game needing better efforts than we saw last week. They responded, scoring the first three goals of the game and getting the Avs out to a comfortable and completely dominant 3-0 lead in the first period.

The game was over from there thanks to Colorado’s star players. That’s exactly what players of that caliber should be doing to a vulnerable team like the Sharks tonight. They pounced early, kept them down, and in Makar’s case, just kept going. Makar’s killer instinct was on full display tonight as he was still in maximum tryhard mode as the third period of a 6-0 game wore on.

This is something for these guys to build from.

Val Nichushkin

A four-point night and he never seemed to take over or anything. It’s just the second four-point night of his career, but hopefully not the last. His goal was a puck hitting him and finding its way in, classic Nichushkin stuff, and the rest of his points were just from plain old hard work. Boring, but repeatable. In tonight’s case, very, very repeatable.

Devon Toews

Two more assists has him at 34 points on the season. Given his high-level defense and the difficult time with a constantly-changing defense around him, Toews has been a steady rock this year. We’ve seen more cracks than normal during some of the tougher nights, but he continues to be one of the league’s most underappreciated defensemen. Just a menace on the back end.

Alexandar Georgiev

I started this column with a simple rule: Any shutout from a goaltender means he’s a stud. Just because Georgiev only had to make 13 saves tonight and the Sharks generated just 0.87 expected goals in the entire 60 minutes doesn’t mean Georgiev isn’t still a star of the night. Georgiev deserved better from the team in front of him two nights ago. He got it tonight.

Duds

Jack Johnson

It’s important I note here that in a 6-0 game the Avs thoroughly dominated from start to finish, there wasn’t really a BAD Av tonight, but I wasn’t going to leave this section blank and Johnson did just enough to give me an excuse to put him here. Two penalties, including hitting Andreas Johnsson in the head that might have resulted in a concussion for Johnsson, is certainly one of the few pockmarks on the evening. In the event Johnson gets suspended for the hit, it gets even worse.

J.T. Compher

I’m putting Compher here for the sole reason that he was the only Avalanche skater who did not record a shot on goal tonight. With 4:58 of PPTOI, he should have gotten SOMETHING on net, right? (This is not serious, Compher was not a dud tonight)

Unsung Hero

Lars Eller

So many good options for the unsung hero tonight, but I wanted to start with Eller. This was easily his best game in an Avs uniform and while he still wasn’t awesome or anything, we should really stop expecting that kind of game from him. He just isn’t the type of player who is going to pop off the ice and make a bunch of memorable plays. That was true tonight, too.

What I did see was him starting to build a little more familiarity with Andrew Cogliano and Logan O’Connor. There were a few shifts tonight where they had the Sharks chasing in their own zone and cycling hard. When Alex Newhook was in the middle, it was hard for that line to make it work at times because Newhook best profiles as a transition player versus one who generates a lot of the cycle.

Eller is the opposite of that as a strong cycle-style player and one who struggles more in transition. Despite the speed of Cogliano and LOC, they are still typically at their best cycling pucks because of their physicality and work ethic. That fits Eller’s game very nicely and tonight we saw those traits starting to find a home on Colorado’s third line.

I understand it’s the Sharks and all, but any step forward for Eller is a positive one.

Colorado’s fourth line

On the other side of the coin, Colorado’s current island of misfit toys that is their fourth line had a hell of game, too. Nieto-Newhook-Malgin would have been impossible to predict at the start of the year (you know, given Nieto and Malgin weren’t on the team), but they actually showed some life tonight.

Malgin’s fifth goal in an Avalanche sweater was fun and another showcase of the kind of skill he possesses. The reality is this line feels like a placeholder for something more permanent, but it sure did look good tonight. Malgin and Newhook aren’t your classic bottom six profiles and Nieto’s speed and ability to play alongside skill fits in well with these two guys.

It’s an unconventional fourth line but when it works, it feels like an obvious good fit. Tonight, it worked and the Avs ran away with the game thanks in some part to their ability to wear on the Sharks. Before the game got out of hand on the scoreboard, this trio put together several good shifts in the first period to help build the tone of utter dominance that would follow.