Avs get point, but get deserved loss after one-period effort in Edmonton

The problem with being a mediocre team is that it never knows what kind of performance it’ll give from one night to the next. That goes double for such a team’s fans, who get their emotions yanked back and forth like soft taffy in a metallic urn.

The Colorado Avalanche, truth be told, has lapsed back into mediocrity. A win here, against a Montreal or Vancouver, are balanced out by losses there to the Edmonton Oilers. Against the Avs, the Oilers earned five of a possible last six points in head-to-head competition within the last month, capped off by Thursday’s 3-2 overtime win at Rogers Place.

Two nights after a rousing comeback win in Vancouver, the Avs had all the energy against the Oilers of a newly-arrived member of a local morgue, at least for the first 35 minutes or so. The fact that the Avs still managed to get a loser’s point was at least…something.

A second critical point, though, never seemed to have a chance in the overtime session when, for whatever reason, coach Jared Bednar decided to roll out one of his slower, more inexperienced units at the start. Against Connor McDavid, Bednar put guys like Matt Nieto out there, and right from the opening lost faceoff of OT, it was all she wrote for the Avs.

McDavid ended it with a tap-in goal at 2:19, after being set up by a whirling dervish sequence by Leon Draisaitl.

The Oilers, a team just playing out the string, did pretty much whatever they wanted in the first 30 minutes against a Colorado team that sank a bit further out of the realistic playoff picture. Edmonton had a 2-0 lead entering the final minute of the second, with 32 shots on net to that point. Only Semyon Varlamov kept it close.

Sam Girard, though, scored in that final minute, and Colin Wilson tied it early in the third. At least the Avs showed enough spunk to get back to even. But, why such a turgid first half of the game, coming off such a big win?

Why was Nathan MacKinnon on the ice to start OT, only to leave the ice right away? Why was Matt Nieto on the ice to start overtime at all? Also, did Nikita Zadorov really deserve to have his butt planted on the bench almost the entire second half of the game? Was he really that bad? Those are questions only Bednar can answer, and as this goes to press, he still hadn’t addressed the media. MacKinnon did get the Avs’ only halfway decent scoring chance of OT, but when that didn’t go in, he was part of an Avs trio that was caught flat-footed on the way back as Draisaitl and McDavid did their thing.

These are the kinds of lost points that will likely be agonized over if the Avs are to miss the playoffs again. Time is getting short to avoid that happening.

The Avs are back at it Saturday afternoon in Calgary, to finish up a brutal 13-of-16 stretch on the road.