Avs-Jets Game 5 Studs & Duds

The Colorado Avalanche ended the season of the Winnipeg Jets with their 6-3 victory in Game 5 to win the series 4-1.

Studs

Yakov Trenin

This is the kind of performance the Avs were looking forward to when they acquired him at the trade deadline. He had a solid series before tonight, but this was on a different level.

His speed and physicality have played up against the poor puck-moving defense of the Jets as Trenin has forced plenty of mistakes, most notably from Connor Hellebuyck on a disastrous sequence for the goaltender, but his forecheck was a consistent problem.

We saw his game taken to a different level tonight and his goal was just him outworking everyone else. He parked himself in front of Hellebuyck, called for a shot from Josh Manson, and tried to deflect the puck in. When the save was made, he beat Neal Pionk to the rebound, threw a bad-angle shot at the net, and then beat Pionk to the puck again.

His hard cut in front of the net had him alone and he finished the chance. It wasn’t sexy, it wasn’t flashy, it was just boring hard work. Playoff hockey. Hard to play against kind of stuff.

Trenin ended up playing more than 16 minutes in this game because his motor was rolling all game and the fourth line for the Avalanche followed his lead as the most consistently effective throughout the game. Certainly not the most productive (lol), but this line held the Avs together when the Jets were pushing hard during the second period. Trenin was at the heart of all of it.

Devon Toews

I loved the game from Toews. He was disruptive as ever with that stick he wields to such great effectiveness. He finished with two assists, the first a great find of Val Nichushkin on the backdoor as he jumped into open ice. I don’t have a ton to say here but wanted to give Toews love for a really strong game.

Nathan MacKinnon and Mikko Rantanen

MacKinnon was quiet for much of this game, but when the third period the guy who should be the NHL’s MVP exploded out of the gate. His game met the moment demanded of him as the Jets had just tied things up at 3-3 and the building was rocking and believing again.

MacKinnon helped shut that down with a two-assist third period and his speed and tenacity helped stymie any comeback hopes for Winnipeg. He wasn’t THE star in the third period but he deserves some flowers for helping to take this game over when the Avs needed it.

Colorado could not ask for more from its depth entering the third period of this game. There was so much production up and down the lineup. It was time for the star players of the Avalanche to bring it home. MacKinnon and Rantanen stepped into the spotlight as they have done so many times in their brilliant careers.

The first Rantanen goal wasn’t the highlight-reel play these two often produce, but rather Rantanen finding space in front of the net and tipping home a Toews shot. You could see the relief on his face after scoring, especially in comparison to what he looked like earlier in the game when he snapped a stick in half after mishandling a Grade-A scoring chance.

The second goal is as Colorado hockey as it gets. MacKinnon took advantage of a bad pinch from Josh Morrissey, flew down the ice to create a 2v1 and made the pass to Rantanen on the backside. There was no mistake made by Rantanen, who put the final nail into the coffin of Winnipeg’s season with the goal that made it 5-3.

These two each finished with nine points in a series neither played their best for extended stretches, but Rantanen’s three-point Game 5 reminded me a lot of Colorado’s close-out game in Calgary back in 2019. There was nothing they could do about their play before that, but with Winnipeg’s back to the wall, the star power at forward delivered the goods.

When talking about the Avalanche’s prospects to win another Stanley Cup, it is the brilliance of these two guys that sits at the forefront of any comparison against opposing teams. There are a lot of great players in this league but just not many who can hang with these cats.

Duds

Sam Girard and Josh Manson

I struggled so much with this pairing. Their puck management was poor for much of the game and the Jets kept attacking them and forcing them into uncomfortable situations.

Winnipeg dominated Girard, in particular, to the tune of a 15-8 shots-on-goal advantage. That’s already bad, but the Jets enjoying edges in scoring chances and high-danger chances of 14-7 and 10-1, respectively, against Girard illustrates his struggles tonight.

For context, the Jets created 21 scoring chances and 13 high-danger chances at 5v5. 14 of 21 scoring chances and 10 of 13 high-danger chances came against Girard. That’s a mess.

Manson, obviously, had his own issues as he opened the game by accidentally firing a puck from his crease into his teammate’s body and back into his own net. So, you know, not great.

The brilliance here is both also had their moments offensively. Hell, Manson finished with two points as he got an assist on Trenin’s goal and then scored the stat-padding empty-net goal at the end of the game. Girard’s offensive contribution did not result in a point but his patience helped the breakout that led to Colorado’s first goal. Watch below how a mess of a breakout eventually coalesced into a goal.

Casey Mittelstadt’s line

It was an excellent series for Mittelstadt and the Avs are on to Round 2 in part because of what a strong performance they got from Mittelstadt. Tonight, however, the Jets went hunting Colorado’s 2C and took advantage of him…a lot.

Winnipeg finally figured out the line combinations they should have been using all along and found quite a bit of success against Mittelstadt’s line. It didn’t matter the matchup this time as both Mark Scheifele and Sean Monahan ripped up Mittelstadt head-to-head.

Scheifele’s line enjoyed a 10-3 advantage in shots on goal when against Mittelstadt. Why Jets head coach Rick Bowness went away from the lines that produced Winnipeg’s best 40 minutes of hockey in the entire series is something he will have to explain in his exit interviews this week, but it did the Avs the kind of favor they are unlikely to get the rest of the postseason.

One area of success for Mittelstadt himself was in the defensive zone faceoff circle. He won three of five draws, including one on the penalty kill. I mentioned last game that I wanted to see how Bednar continued deploying him to see if that role would grow a little and it appears it is something to keep an eye on in Round 2 as well.

Nikolai Kovalenko

It’s a tough assignment facing Kovalenko as he might have more games than practices in an Avalanche sweater, but this was still a reminder of the growing pains he’s going through.

He had a couple of notable plays in the defensive zone in Game 4 that made it easier for the coaching staff to build some trust but his bad breakdown on Winnipeg’s third goal was hard to watch and it was his final shift of the third period until the final faceoff with two seconds on the clock after Manson’s empty-net goal.

On the upside, Kovalenko won that faceoff and finished the game with a 100% win rate. So that was cool.

Avs Unsung Hero

Valeri Nichushkin

He scored a nice goal on the feed from Toews to give him an absolutely insane seven goals in the series. That rocked, but I don’t have a ton to add to it beyond that.

What I want to focus on more is the work he did on Colorado’s fourth goal, which ultimately became the series-clinching goal.

Let’s watch the goal first before we dig into it some.

It’s a good, aggressive dump-in from Sean Walker but the change from the Jets is ghastly. Nichushkin gets on his horse and wins the race to the puck. No shock there, he’s fast and wins a lot of foot races.

From there, he jukes Adam Lowry out of his skates. Mind you, that is “Nathan MacKinnon Eraser” Adam Lowry. That is “Will receive Selke votes” Adam Lowry. Anyway, Lowry spins out as Nichushkin then has to deal with the only Jets defenseman worth a damn in this series, Josh Morrissey.

Morrissey pushes Nichushkin up against the boards and removes control from the Avalanche forward. By that point, Lowry had recovered and got into the board battle. Somehow this 2v1 for the Jets involving their best defensive forward and best defenseman, Val Nichushkin wins. The puck works out high and becomes Rantanen’s first goal of the series.

This is the kind of stuff Nichushkin does that is so special. The goal in the first period was great, but that play is really more about what the guys did before him. The fourth Avalanche goal? A direct result of Nichushkin’s work against the two guys Winnipeg hand-picked to be in that situation. This success is part of the reason the Avs controlled 60% of the shots on goal during the series with Nichushkin on the ice.