Awful start dooms Avalanche as they lose again to St. Louis

Of all the Colorado Avalanche games I’ve written about this year, this is one of the easier ones to look back on. A truly awful first period saw the Avs get down to the St. Louis Blues, 2-0, and fail to score on three separate power plays, and before the halfway mark of the game the Avs trailed 4-0.

It got a lot better from there as the Avs crawled back into things and briefly made them interesting with another 6v5 goal to bring the score to 4-3. An empty-net goal from Robert Thomas, his fourth point of the game, ended the intrigue and Sam Malinski got a goal that counts and all but came with just nine seconds remaining so it made the score 5-4 and look better, but had no material impact on the outcome of the game.

Anyway, let’s talk about it.

Tired, beat up Avalanche undone by a terrible start

Anytime you take a penalty 31 seconds into the game and then allow the first goal of the game just 49 seconds in, you’re fighting an uphill battle. I’m not here for any complaints about the call (it wasn’t good, but that’s life) because the team just has to come out ready to play. The Avs had chances to build into this game.

And chances. And chances. And chances.

Blues goaltender Jordan Binnington was great, but the Avs lacked the finishing and struggled to generate quality looks, especially at 5v5. The Avs finished with zero high-danger chances in the first period. Meanwhile, the Blues weren’t struggling to produce chances and Avalanche netminder Mackenzie Blackwood did not build from a poor performance against Columbus two nights ago.

It was another outing where Blackwood should have made another save or two along the way, but at least tonight’s four-goals allowed was blame shared by the skaters and goaltender equally. The group in front of him just wasn’t very good and it stopped the trend of the last two games where either the goalie was poor or the skaters were but one was bailing out the other.

Tonight, both were poor, so I guess good on them for sticking together as a team.

Now is the part where I mention a few caveats here that you can decide how much of a role they played in the outcome of this game. This was the third game in four nights for the Avs, which I’ve written all season is what players will tell you is the toughest situation they face, even more challenging than a back-to-back. Conversely, this was St. Louis’s third game in the last seven days, all at home.

Also meaningful (to me, anyway), is the absence of Jonathan Drouin and Martin Necas. Two key cogs to their top six forward group (especially Necas), those are guys whose playmaking and puckhandling ability help generate the exact kind of scoring chances the Avs did not create until it was way too late in the contest.

Anyway, add up a tired team, an injured team (Sam Girard and Josh Manson remain out on the back end), and the league’s hottest team (now 12 straight wins for the Blues), and this isn’t a shocking result. Lacking so badly in competitiveness before the score got to 4-0 is undeniably disappointing, but that brings me to the next part of this game I want to talk about.

Small props to the Avs for pushing back

Down 4-0 with half of a game to play, the Avs could have packed it in and called it quits. Instead, they woke up and decided to play a little hockey. Of course, if the situation was reversed, I wouldn’t be giving the Blues a lot of credit for playing hard once they got down four goals, I’d be pointing out that teams always take their foot off the gas when winning by that wide of a margin.

So, it’s fair to say that St. Louis eased back on the throttle, but Colorado also turned up the wick.

There’s an easy and clear way to see that in photo form. Here’s the game flow in 5v5 shot attempts:

See that fourth blue dot? Immediately after that, the Avs started pressuring St. Louis more and took over control of the pace of play. Hell, they even managed to actually kill a penalty after that!

Two quick goals at the end of the second period made for a more interesting third period than we would have thought after the Blues were up 4-0, but the Avs couldn’t get one past Binnington again until just 2:18 remained in the game. A Nathan MacKinnon shot got the Avs to within 4-3 after it hit a St. Louis skate, but a terrible giveaway by Artturi Lehkonen led directly to the empty-net goal that sealed the deal for the Blues.

It wasn’t enough. Of course it wasn’t. You don’t get down 4-0 to actual good teams and make a game of it very often, so good on the Avs for never giving up and never surrendering. Maybe next time don’t get down by four goals to begin with and these two teams can have another clash. They aren’t set to play each other again until the Western Conference Finals in the upcoming playoffs or next season, so the Avs won’t have a chance to get punched in the face by the Blues again for a while.

Anyway, this was a pretty simple one. The shot metrics look great for the Avs at the end, but it was too little, way too late. The Avs have the next two days off before welcoming in Vegas on Tuesday night. The Avs still lead the Blues by five points with each team having four games left to play, so Colorado is on the cusp of clinching the third seed in the Central Division, but they still have work to do.