Avs get off to great start against Minnesota

It’s clear – as clear as was the mocking grin on Nikita Zadorov’s face – that the Avalanche don’t fear the Minnesota Wild anymore.

It used to be that the Wild not only came in and beat the Avs all the time at the Pepsi Center but they beat ’em up a little too. The opposite is the case now.

Zadorov, who had no takers in his offers to rough things up even more with a couple of Wild players, was one of many Avs who paid them no mind in Colorado’s 4-1 opening-night victory.

Goals by Nathan MacKinnon, Carl Soderberg and an empty-netter by Mikko Rantanen  – then another empty-netter by J.T. Compher – made for an easy time of it for the Avs. Well, easy might be a bit strong. This was still a 2-1 game until Rantanen’s empty-netter with a couple minutes left, but the shot differential was 40-21 for the home team.

All in all, a very fine debut performance for the 2018-19 Colorado Avalanche.

“It was a nice way to get things rolling,” Rantanen said. “Third period, maybe we were a little bit flat. We had the lead so I think we were defending too much. I think we should have just kept grinding, kept skating to pucks. That’s one thing we can be better at, but I think it was a good team effort.”

The game almost changed for the worse shortly into the third period. Colin Wilson (who was excellent in his first game as a second-line right wing) looked like he’d scored a good goal to make it a 3-1 Avs lead, but replays showed Wilson essentially punched the puck in with his glove hand. Even if the glove is on the stick, you can’t have primary contact to the puck with a glove and have it count.

Alexander Kerfoot took a tripping penalty not long after that, and instead of a two-goal lead, the Avs were suddenly on the penalty kill against a very good Wild PP unit. The home squad did the job, though, not giving the Wild too much in close.

The Avs outshot the Wild 32-13 in the first 40 minutes, and if not for Wild goalie Devan Dubynk, this would have been over early. The Wild grabbed the early lead, though, on Zach Parise’s tap-in goal at 6:14. It was one of five shots the Avs would allow in that first while getting 14 themselves.

Carl Soderberg put one of them in, a short side blast at 12:29, from the left circle.

Nathan MacKinnon did not score in the preseason (he only played two games), but he got a goal in the second period. The Hart Trophy finalist one-timed home Mikko Rantanen’s expert crossing pass – left boards to right crease – for a 2-1 lead that stood up entering the third.

Game highlights here:

The Avs did sit back a bit in the third, though. They did not get a shot on goal (a good one anyway) in the first 10 minutes of the period. They didn’t give the Wild much either, though. When Minnesota did get something, Semyon Varlamov was there, for his first win and first appearance since being hurt late in the last regular season.

The Avs’ penalty kill, which was fourth in the NHL last season at 83.3 percent, did a nice job considering there was some new personnel on board – especially forward Matt Calvert. Avs coach Jared Bednar said something interesting afterward too: that, based on analytics he’s studied, the PK tries to engineer certain types of shots that it knows Varlamov has a higher chance of stopping.

“The analytics show that Varly, on certain shots on the opposing power play, he’s rock solid,” Bednar said. “He sits in on our PK meetings, and he knows where the shots are going to come from. And he also knows if there’s a breakdown, what the troubles may possibly be. So, he can make the reads just like the penalty killers make the reads.”

As for the physical stuff, the Wild just don’t seem to scare the Avs anymore. Dating back to some blowout wins last year over their division rival, Colorado now not only can outskate Minnesota but outmuscle them as well.

Zadorov, who levied a couple of big hits on Wild opponents, just laughed when given what-for – especially to Nino Niederreiter in the third.

“We had some success against them last year, and I think our confidence as a team is growing,” Bednar said. “And, it should be going. We’re playing well against that team. We know that they have a lot of really good players and are a dangerous team, and hopefully, they think the same about us. But we get up for these games.”