Avs-Lightning Game 55 Studs & Duds

Studs

Artturi Lehkonen

It’s pretty impressive how the Avalanche lost a band-aid type of player in J.T. Compher but have watched Valeri Nichushkin, Logan O’Connor, and Artturi Lehkonen all take turns replacing him as the jack-of-all-trades guy. Now imagine if all three were healthy at the same time. We dream a little dream, right?

Anyway, Lehkonen was really good all over the ice again with another two points as he snagged a freebie assist on Bowen Byram’s flukey second goal but his tip-in goal that very briefly gave the Avs the lead in the third period was vintage Lehkonen.

His grit and grind playstyle is something the Avalanche desperately need, especially during the ongoing absences of Nichushkin and O’Connor, and it’s easy to see where Colorado’s skill meshes so nicely with his ability to help in so many facets of the game. There weren’t many stars of this mess of a road trip but Lehkonen’s strong finish is very encouraging.

Bowen Byram

Another guy who finished the trip strong was Byram, who followed a two-assist game with a two-goal game. Weirdly, the Avs have lost every game in which Byram has scored two goals, but scoring goals is the point of the game so I’m putting him as a Stud tonight.

The first goal saw Byram get away with using Brandon Hagel as a slingshot in the neutral zone but he read the play and activated. The finish was pretty easy since the real play was made by Mikko Rantanen but that is the aggression that has been lacking from Byram’s game for far too much of this season.

His second goal was more about Andrei Vasilevskiy not covering the puck and nobody else realizing it, but Byram saw it free on the ice, jumped into the action and was able to poke it in. Good work from him to tie the game.

I can’t write about Byram’s play in this game without also mentioning that he lost track of Steven Stamkos immediately after Lehkonen gave the Avs the lead in the third period and that is not a guy you should be losing track of!

The Stamkos game-tying goal came just 20 seconds after Lehkonen’s goal and erased any possibility of building momentum and trying to close out the Lightning. It was a huge mistake on an otherwise solid night from Byram.

Special Teams

It wasn’t always pretty but the Avs scored on one of three chances on the power play and kept the top-rated Lightning power play from scoring in both of their chances.

This was a terrible road trip for both special team units so for them to win this battle tonight only serves to reinforce what a disappointing loss this truly is. I don’t have a ton to say about it other than noting that losing games despite winning on special teams is a frustrating recipe.

Duds

The entire road trip

1-4-1 on a six-game road trip is just a bad result. I don’t care how long the trip was and what the quality of teams played was, the Avalanche have not been good enough on the road this season and this was not the type of result that instills belief that this group can make a deep postseason run.

They leaned into a lot of self-defeating habits and blew third-period leads against the Rangers and Lightning while also allowing the Devils to score in the final five minutes of the third period to win in regulation. Those are all lost points in a Central Division race that is suddenly watching the Avs get behind the eight ball a bit.

There’s no way to make this trip anything but a major disappointment.

Devon Toews and Cale Makar

It’s not often when Colorado’s top defensive pairing arguably loses Colorado a game but they were both involved in awful puck management and decision-making. From turnovers to poor defense in general, both Toews and Makar were primary culprits in this frustrating result.

The Avalanche regularly turn to this pairing to stop the bleeding when opposing teams start to build momentum and the Lightning just plowed through and had a mountain of success against them.

It’s hard to win when your top defensive guys fail to make many positive plays all game but it gets much harder when they are active detriments, especially defensively.

Unsung Hero

Justus Annunen

He allowed four goals but they came on a weird bounce, two open looks for the NHL’s leading scorer in Nikita Kucherov and a breakaway by Stamkos, one of the league’s best goal-scorers of the last 15 years.

So, you know, a tough night for the stats to get dropped on Annunen like that but his performance provided a lot of encouragement to me as he stopped a handful of other breakaways and came up with numerous big stops that kept the Avs involved.

It wasn’t the kind of game that should dissuade Colorado’s front office from finding a veteran backup to push Annunen back to the Colorado Eagles, but it was definitely better than what we saw from Annunen in New Jersey earlier on this trip.

Goaltending for the Avs this season feels cursed.