Avs' grip on playoff spot gets slipperier after bad effort against Kings

It started like so many other Avalanche home games of late. The team wearing burgundy and blue jumped out quick, its top players overrunning those of the Los Angeles Kings, and was rewarded with a one-goal lead at the 3:33 mark.

And then? And then it all went horribly for the Avs, who started turning the puck over and looking jittery against the more experienced Kings en route to a 7-1 loss at the Pepsi Center.

A win Thursday wouldn’t have clinched a playoff spot for the Avs, but it sure would have gone a long way to making it tougher for their nearest Western Conference competitors. A win would have opened up a five-point lead on the ninth-place St. Louis Blues.

Now, it’s still just a three-point lead on St. Louis, the Blues now have a game in hand and they play the cupcake Vancouver Canucks Friday night at home in what will be the second of back-to-back games for the Canucks.

It may come down to that final game of the season, folks, at home against St. Louis.

It all started going back for the Avs when Nikita Zadorov had a puck stolen from him behind his own net by Dustin Brown, who fed Anze Kopitar in front for an easy-as-you-please fake and backhander past Semyon Varlamov – who if he isn’t overworked right now sure looked it, at least, in this one. It would not be the only costly, fundamental mistake by Zadorov of the period.

The Kings’ Jake Muzzin made it 2-1 at 7:54 of the first, on a screened slap shot past Varlamov. Then came the real killer goal of the night – with 16 seconds left in the period. It was a power-play goal, created when Zadorov went for a big hit – and missed – on a King coming down the right side. Zadorov then compounded things by taking a hooking minor with 46 seconds left in the period.

Kopitar scored his 31st of the season, a slapper from the right circle, to make it 3-1 after 20 minutes.

“I think, after they got that second and third one, we started tiptoeing around the puck,” Jared Bednar said. “They were on top of pucks from there on. I kind of felt like we fragmented as a team for the first time in a long time. We got away from the way we need to play. It’s a lesson for us. You face a little adversity in a game, and you’ve got to trust your structure. We started going individual.”

Any hope of an Avs comeback went out the window early in the second, after a killer sequence of Nathan MacKinnon hitting the crossbar in the first minute, then Tobias Rieder came down the other way on a breakaway for an easy goal and a 4-1 lead. Kopitar added another goal late in the second for the hat trick, prompting Jared Bednar to pull Varlamov in favor of Jonathan Bernier, who is wearing a generic white mask right now. It is a bigger, more padded helmet than the other he’s worn all year, to better protect against concussions.

The Avs have to get it back together quick, as the Pacific-leading Vegas Golden Knights are coming to town Saturday, for the first of a home-and-home series that concludes Monday in Sin City. Expect Bernier to start that one, as Varlamov – as good as he’s been of late – looked exhausted and slow in this one. It’s time for Varly to get a rest.

He was NOT the reason the Avs were blown out; the Avs made way too many defensive mistakes in their own zone, they got next to nothing offensively from lines 2-4 and let themselves look intimidated by the Kings’ size.

“Win or lose, you reset. Obviously, we have to learn from this one,” captain Gabe Landeskog said. “We’ve got to be the agressors every night, and for the first 10 minutes I thought we were. But after they tied it up and scored again, we didn’t seem to have an answer.”

OTHER NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS

• Carl Soderberg missed another game with an unspecified illness, and his absence was sorely felt. Bednar probably would have used him as a checking center against Kopitar. His big frame and good defensive instincts might have made a big difference against Kopitar.
• Mark Barberio still remains out with an unspecified injury. It is not, as I’d previously thought, a concussion. I talked briefly with the veteran defenseman and, while it was off the record, things don’t look good for him returning before the end of the regular season. He is hopeful he can play beyond that.
• Duncan Siemens played instead of David Warsofsky, and Vladislav Kamenev replaced Dominic Toninato. Neither player did much of anything noteworthy when the game mattered.
• Tyson Barrie appeared to hurt himself early in the first period, but returned to play on.