Avs Game 72 Studs & Duds: Close but counts

Studs

Valeri Nichushkin

What do you say about the chu-chu train? His speed still hasn’t fully returned after the myriad of lower-body injuries he’s fought through this year but he’s healthy enough otherwise to help the Avalanche and today we saw a good showcase of his value to the team.

He’s not their most skilled forward or their hardest working or their biggest and meanest. He may not be the best at any particular skill except being Val Nichushkin, which is to say he’s a little of a lot. He’s got a little touch, a little snarl and sandpaper, a little (lot of) size, and a little deception to his game that helps him hunt pucks more like a vulture than a banshee.

The in-front goal in the third period to briefly reclaim Colorado’s lead was great and all, but that isn’t why we’re all talking about him after this game. No, it was the shootout goal, just the second shootout attempt of his career (the first one didn’t even result in a shot on goal) that left jaws dropped.

The filthy deke to his backhand had Connor Ingram swimming his way out of the net and Nichushkin tucked home the game-deciding goal and immediately followed it with, let’s call it a confident celebration.

Alexandar Georgiev

What a shock I have him here! I’m skipping the usual stuff about him playing well and then the third period happened and all that. No, I want to talk about the response to that third period.

One of the unknowns in trading for Georgiev was how he was going to handle the pressure of taking the net for the Colorado Avalanche, defending Stanley Cup champions who might have a little desire to make some history and repeat the feat.

Adversity has been the name of the game for the Avs this entire season, however, so we’ve seen Georgiev under fire basically the entire season. He has spent exactly zero minutes behind the Avalanche team that was put together to compete for that Cup in front of him.

On a smaller scale, Georgiev watched a 2-0 lead evaporate and when the Avs immediately got it back, he gave up what can only generously be described as a bad goal. It was just bad. He should’ve been more competitive on that play and instead he fell asleep mentally and got got. It happens.

His response was to absolutely lock it down from there, shutting down Arizona the rest of the third period, overtime, and through seven shootout shooters. He could have folded it up, especially after being the primary culprit on the third goal that tied the game again, but he rose to the occasion.

Alexandar Georgiev is pretty good, y’all.

Colorado’s power play

It wasn’t a very good game for the Avalanche with the man advantage until the third period. They had just given up a 2-0 lead and had already gone 0-for-2 on the power play and had trouble setting up on both chances.

The third chance, however, Colorado sustained a little more zone pressure and eventually made a wicked play not involving Nathan MacKinnon or Cale Makar. Devon Toews worked the puck down low and Mikko Rantanen whipped a nasty pass to the front of the Arizona net and Nichushkin tipped it in from there.

It was great hockey. Great communication, planning, and execution. It was picture-perfect and it halted the significant momentum Arizona had built minutes earlier with their two-goal outburst to tie the game. It was the 11th consecutive game the Avs have scored a power play, a streak that has now put this year’s team second in team history following the club’s move to Colorado. The record remains at 14.

Duds

Colorado’s third period

Entering the third period, the game had been all Avalanche. It was 2-0 on the scoreboard but the Coyotes had been miserably outplayed and outclassed by a significant margin. This was setting up to be an easy period for the Avs who just needed to keep Arizona’s attack at bay for another 20 minutes and they could save some legs for Anaheim tomorrow.

That did not hold up.

The Coyotes came out and played their best period against the Avs since their win over the Avs back in December. Turns out not traveling and trying to play on the same day is actually a pretty nice lack of advantage from the home team. Who knew?

That said, Arizona racked up a 29-7 shot attempt advantage with actual shots on goal being 15-4. The Avs went from allowing nine scoring chances and one high-danger chance in the first two periods to giving up 17 scoring chances and nine high-danger chances in the third period alone.

It was a bloodbath.

This is a Coyotes team that has already screwed up their tank chances and will now require a miracle to land the draft lotto prize in Connor Bedard and an Avalanche team that is trying to tighten the screws on its Cup team as they also are trying to secure home-ice advantage in the first round of the postseason.

Blowing the two-goal lead is one thing, but then turning around and regaining your lead only to blow it again? Come on. There’s nothing good or encouraging about that.

Colorado’s three superstars

MacKinnon, Makar, Rantanen. None of them, to my eye, played a very good game.

Rantanen scored the game’s first goal and had some adventurous moments throughout the game, including stopping skating in overtime to complain to an official about wanting a penalty called and watching the guy he should have been covering nearly get a scoring chance out of the entire thing.

They’re all human, allegedly, so we’ll allow that bad days happen for even the best of them. It just looked like that bad day happened to all of them at the same time. Most bizarrely, they were all out of sync with each other, which almost never happens because they’ve spent so much time playing together that they have that supernatural stuff going on with them.

Overtime was the best example of this when they just couldn’t seem to string consecutive passes together and sometimes even failing to get just one to work out. It was an ugly effort from all of these guys. Gritty at times, but ugly.

Lars Eller

After a string of very good games, Eller has struggled a bit in both of the games against the Coyotes. He was simply awful today, however, as it didn’t matter which line combination Jared Bednar tried to put him with, it just didn’t work out.

The cycle offense was a no-show from Eller and his defense left everything to be desired. He was a main target of Arizona’s domination in the third period as Eller finished with just three shot attempts for and 17 against at 5v5 today. That’s…absolutely awful.

With Eller on the ice, the Coyotes went 8-1 in scoring chances and 5-0 in high-danger chances. It’s not a big leap to say the Avs need significantly better play from Eller than they got today.

Unsung Hero

The shootout

What the hell was that shootout?

After each team’s first few shooters, Schmaltz and Keller for Arizona and Rodrigues and MacKinnon for Colorado, it was a comedy of errors for both teams. Between guys who didn’t have moves to make, lost control of the puck while trying to do something, or just firing a puck from the half-circle spot, neither goaltender really had to work very hard to keep the opposing team off the board.

Nichushkin was the first guy from either team to really make a serious move and holy smokes did he ever make a move? Where did that come from? That was just his second career shootout attempt and after Denis Malgin had nothing in the bag and Cale Makar skied his so badly the team plane might have landed in Anaheim before that puck came down, you might be able to argue Nichushkin should be moved up in that pecking order a bit in the future.

Georgiev stopped all seven Arizona shooters, giving him 23 saves on 29 shootout attempts this season. Both are highs for the NHL this season and his .793 save percentage in the format is the second-best among goalies with at least three shootouts this year. Pretty, pretty, pretty good.