Avs-Penguins Game 62 Studs & Duds

The Colorado Avalanche topped the Pittsburgh Penguins, 4-1, in a slugfest of mediocrity. These are the Avs studs and duds from the game.

Studs

Scott Wedgewood

Wedgewood was Colorado’s best player last night. His chaotic style is equal parts thrilling and heartstopping because you never know when he’s going to play his way out of position and give up an easy one.

In the end, he stopped 32 of 33 shots on goal and was rightly rewarded the game’s first star. Mackenzie Blackwood has been everything the Avs wanted from a starting goaltender, but Wedgewood’s work as a reliable backup has flown under the radar largely due to injury issues that have cropped up and kept him from getting as many starts as the Avs would like.

With performances like the one last night, Wedgewood is earning more opportunity to keep Blackwood fresh for the postseason. He has looked more like the guy in Dallas than the nightmare he experienced in Nashville earlier this year.

Artturi Lehkonen

He scored goals one and three for the Avs last night. The first was the first goal of the game and another example of him going to the net and taking up space while the skill guys around him work the puck around until they can give Lehkonen a chance. They did, and he buried it.

Lehkonen’s second goal was probably more indicative of the kind of season the Pens are having, as it was a puck that redirected twice to Lehkonen and created the empty-net goal for him. That isn’t Lehkonen’s fault, but it does make you feel a little bad for the Pens. That was hard to watch.

Anyway, 26 goals for Lehkonen and in a game where Colorado had serious issues defensively, he was only on the ice for one high-danger chance against. The only other players with one? Devon Toews and Sam Malinski. The more you know and now you know.

This pass from Val Nichushkin

Nichushkin was the king of near-misses last night as he failed to score on two separate breakaways, including a 2v0 break shorthanded. But this pass on the power play to Casey Mittelstadt for the game-winning goal?

That pass is outrageous. The lift, the way it lands perfectly flat? The way you see both Pens’ sticks reaching to get in the way? It’s just perfect. Mittelstadt finishes, too, otherwise we wouldn’t be talking about this.

Devon Toews

Toews played 21:28 of 5v5 time last night and the Penguins only had eight shot attempts in that entire time. Of those eight, only four got on goal. That’s over 1/3 of the game. 11:12 of that was head-to-head against Sidney Crosby and, you’ll be shocked by this part, seven of those shot attempts and three of those shots on goal happened.

If you’re doing the napkin math right now, that means in the 10:16 of ice time that Toews was out there not against Crosby, the Penguins managed just this:

• Shot attempts: 1
• Shots on goal: 1
• Scoring chances: 1
• High-danger chances: 0

That is a dominant defensive effort from the only Avalanche defenseman that I thought played really well. Toews also hit the post on the other end so he was thisclose to getting that love in the box score, too.

Duds

Pick a defenseman not named Devon Toews

I thought Colorado’s blueline was a trainwreck last night. A true, utter disaster. That was one of the worst games I can remember seeing from Sam Girard in a long time. Girard can be a little squirrely at times, but he usually settles into the things he does well. Last night, he did very little well. It was a total mess.

Oliver Kylington followed up one of his best games as an Av with one of his worst. He was awful at every turn and being paired with Girard only compounded both of their problems. That pairing got completely torched. They allowed eight high-danger chances in just 10:25 of ice time together. Kylington also made a better window than door on Pittsburgh’s only goal as his matadorian defense of the cross-ice pass was truly a sight to behold.

Malinski and Makar were the least offensive of the five, with Makar picking up an assist to counterbalance the terrible giveaway and defensive coverage on Pittsburgh’s lone goal. I don’t know what he was doing on that entire play, but he snagged an assist earlier and he was on the ice for a lot of the same success Toews was, so it wasn’t like it was all bad for Makar.

Malinski’s night was more understated, but he continues to struggle to create meaningful offense. He is a puck-moving defenseman. If he’s not generating offense, he’s fighting uphill to make it in the NHL. It’s not bad, it’s just easily replaced right now.

Ryan Lindgren was acquired over the weekend so he’s still adjusting to playing a very different style in Colorado. He gets some leeway there and I know head coach Jared Bednar said after the game he felt Lindgren was great in his own zone.

That’s good because Lindgren spent most of his 18:06 of 5v5 time there. The Penguins absolutely feasted on the new guy as shots on goal were 14-4 in favor of Pittsburgh when Lindgren was on the ice. Given the minutes played, that they only generated seven scoring chances and two high-danger chances lends credence to the idea that Lindgren was taking care of the front of his own net, which he was acquired to do. That’s great, but he’s going to have to make better plays with the puck for this thing to truly work the way the Avs want.

Avs Unsung Hero

The power play

The Avs power play only got one opportunity to do its thing last night and they made it count. They registered exactly one shot on goal in 1:28 of time with the man advantage. Normally, this wouldn’t be good, but that one shot went into the net when Mittelstadt’s shot doinked off goaltender Alex Nedeljkovic and in for the game-winning goal.

This unit has not done a great job this season and has been one of the biggest areas of weakness most of the season. That said, since the Avs traded Mikko Rantanen on January 24, the power play has been the second-best unit in hockey, scoring at a 34.4% rate across 13 games.

What was really encouraging is that it wasn’t exclusively the top unit that got it done last night. It was more like unit 1.5 since Nathan MacKinnon stayed out there and helped them gain the zone, but still. The ability to get production beyond just those couple of players has been a problem all season and they got it again.

It’s not related to the power play, but small shoutout to Jack Drury for the effort on his empty-net goal. Evgeni Malkin was throwing one of his fits in trying to stop him from scoring it but he kept at it. I enjoyed it.