Avs ride familiar formula to win over Wild

Nathan MacKinnon is a superstar. Mikko Rantanen is right behind him. The world seemingly expects Cale Makar to cure cancer in between shifts.

It can be easy to forget the steady presence of Gabe Landeskog, who plays third banana on the league’s most dominant top line.

It’s a new year but the same old captain for the Avalanche as he enters his ninth season in Colorado. It was that familiar face standing on the backdoor waiting for a perfect pass from Rantanen. Landeskog tapped it in, giving him his first goal of the season and ultimately Colorado the game-winner in tonight’s 4-2 win over the Minnesota Wild.

It was a goal not only of opportunity but a little redemption, too, for Landeskog.

“I’ve been getting those for years,” Landeskog said with a wry smile. “Sometimes I just don’t put ’em in. I had one a minute into the game in the home opener I missed but I was able to get it back today.”

The goal was the 27th game-winner of his career and pushed Colorado to 2-0 on the season. Their four points have them atop the Central Division with 80 games to play (lol).

Colorado’s win wasn’t without quite a struggle, however. Landeskog repeatedly talked about the first ten minutes of the first period when Colorado was leading 2-0 and dominating all aspects of play.

“Tonight I thought we had a real solid 10 minutes of the first and they get a flukey bounce off EJ and it goes in and that shifts the momentum back their way and they start playing a little more physical and getting into the game that way,” Landeskog said.

Minnesota got to within 2-1 at 10:17 when a Ryan Suter shot was tipped in off Erik Johnson’s stick and flipped the momentum.

“You’ve got to remember there’s really good hockey teams on the other side,” Landeskog added. “Sometimes you feel that you’re playing so well the first period or the first ten minutes that you should be up a few more goals maybe. That doesn’t change the fact that we’ve got to play 60 minutes.

Getting Colorado out of their comfort zone and into the other team’s gameplan has been mildly successful for Calgary and Minnesota the first two games of the season. Each time the Avalanche has responded with a pushback of their own and a reminder this team is different than the mentally fragile groups of yesterday.

“For us, it’s going to be important to keep chipping away,” Landeskog said. “We know what’s going to make us successful and that’s playing with that team speed. What can we do better? Cleaning up our d-zone, breakouts and things like that, coming in five guys into the picture, helping out and being able to exit quick and going down and starting to create some more offense down there.”

“Down there” is the offensive zone, where the Avalanche spent plenty of time during their six power-play attempts tonight. Their top unit has been quarterbacked by Cale Makar, who notched his second assist of the season and has one in each game so far, both on the power play.

Makar’s stat line tonight was stuffed as he did a little of everything. He registered six shot attempts, four that were blocked and two that missed but hit the post, one hit, two takeaways and four blocked shots all in 17:50 of ice time.

Nights like tonight remind you Makar is a special talent who is still just trying to figure it all out.

“He’s doing well,” Landeskog said of his young teammate. “You have to remember he’s only played whatever that was in the playoffs. It’s easy to forget that when you look at him as a player and look at how good he is and what he can do out there. He’s still technically a rookie and for us, we know that he’s going to be a hell of a hockey player. He’s going to be one of the best defensemen in the league. You also have to be patient with him and make sure you’re talking to him.”

As far as their work as a power-play unit, it’s always a work in progress on special teams. That’s certainly not going to change with a rookie at the helm, despite them scoring three goals with the man advantage through two games.

“It’s just going to take time as a power-play unit,” Landeskog said. “Today, I don’t think it was any of our best games on the power play. I thought we were holding on to it a little too long, everybody, but Cale’s been a stud. The thing is with him is everyone just expects him to be so good. I think that’s what maybe will make you disappointed. Sometimes there will be mistakes that anybody will make. Nonetheless, he’s been a stud and he’s going to be a stud for us for a long time.”

The bottom line for Colorado is they finish the first week of the NHL season 2-0 and atop their division. Warts and all, that’s a pretty good way to go into a four-day break.

“That’s a good thing,” Landeskog said. “You’re 2-0 and there’s a lot of things you can clean up.”

TAKEAWAYS

• Hard to believe there are people out there who think Mikko Rantanen is overrated or wasn’t worth the money the Avalanche agreed to pay him. He’s Baby Jagr for a reason.
• Philipp Grubauer versus expectations as the number one starter will be an interesting battle to follow through the season. It would really help if his teammates would stop putting pucks past him. It’s hard enough stopping the other team’s shots!
• Cale Makar looked much more like the dynamic force we are expecting to see this season. He was pretty quiet in the first game, nabbing a second assist where he didn’t do a lot. He got another one tonight but was significantly more involved in both ends of the ice. His confidence will be important for Colorado because when he’s feeling it he’s a special talent.
• The third pairing of Graves-Timmins may not last much longer if they can’t smooth out some of their issues. Each player made poor reads tonight that led to blown coverages. The limitations of Timmins as a skater was exposed a couple of times tonight and that’s discouraging. He has to make up for that with the right reads and hockey smarts.
• Graves has that Ryan O’Byrne trait where he loves shooting for the foot wide of the net in hopes of getting a deflection. He has a killer shot. Just try to score! (Postgame note: Yeah! Like that!)
• Two games in and Cale Makar has had two big hits. For a guy considered undersized, he’s going to lay a lot more guys out than you’d expect. Broad shoulders make it easier to plant a charge into oncoming puck carriers.
• Penalty kill continues to be an issue but beyond that, you have to really like what Colorado has done overall through two games. Teams aren’t dug into their systems and haven’t tightened the screws yet so you’re a lot more vulnerable to random variance costing you games early in the season but the Avs have responded to two own-goals in the first two games by winning anyway. As we’ve seen previously, mental fortitude is key across 82 games.
• Nathan MacKinnon has three points in two games and it feels like he’s been just okay through two games. This is how special seasons are built.
• I talked to Matt Calvert during the preseason and he said he really wanted to push for 30 points after registering a career-high 26 last year. Two games down, 28 points to go!