Beat up Avalanche team makes statement with win in Calgary

You know, when news dropped that Nathan MacKinnon was heading back to Denver with an upper-body injury that potentially (probably?) stemmed from his fight with Matt Dumba two days ago, it was the exact kind of thing that has consistently gone the way of the Calgary Flames this year.

The Flames have gotten the benefit of the league’s worst division, which they lead by seven points with two games in hand on second-place Los Angeles, they have by far the lowest man-games lost due to injury, and have had the league’s most productive top line and a starting goaltender that has posted a league-high nine shutouts.

On the injury front, though, it’s been truly remarkable. While the Avs lost MacKinnon for the foreseeable future, the Flames have seen their top 10 scorers play every single game this year and 16 lineup regulars have played at least 59 games. That’s incredible. The Avs have just seven players with at least 60 games played, so there’s been a lot of fluidity to the lineup this year.

It was very likely that experience that saw the Avs look plenty comfortable in a game that was kind of important if the Flames had real plans on chasing down the Avalanche for the top seed in the west this year.

A regulation win would’ve brought the Flames to eight points back with 16 games to play, still a tall task to be sure but at least something they could talk themselves into, especially with a game in hand on the Avalanche.

After the Avs rolled into Calgary and walked out with a gritty 2-1 win against the Flames’ ideal lineup while Colorado was missing MacKinnon, Gabe Landeskog, Sam Girard, Bowen Byram, and Ryan Murray, the lead is back up to 12 points with 16 games to play.

Realistically, I think that race is probably over.

After a game in those conditions where the Flames scored just one goal that came on a five-on-three power play for 1:42 after back-to-back penalties by Cale Makar and Val Nichushkin, two key penalty killers mind you, and where Calgary only outshot Colorado 27-25 at 5v5, I’m not sure the folks clamoring to build up the Flames as a serious threat to the Avalanche out west have too much else to say.

This was Calgary’s opportunity to be a lion pouncing on a wounded gazelle, and it ended up giving the Avalanche the season series win (2-0-1 while conceding just one goal in the last two matchups) while enhancing Colorado’s belief that they are just a clear-cut step ahead of the rest of the conference.

I’m not normally a person to make too big of one game. Anything can happen on any given day and all, but there were no excuses for the Flames in this game. They had every advantage imaginable. There was no conversation about playing their backup goaltender or playing the second night of a back-to-back or anything. Following their electric win in The Battle of Alberta over the weekend, the Flames had a golden opportunity to strike real fear in Colorado in a head-to-head setting and show the Avs are going to need every last player they can find to beat them.

That…just didn’t happen tonight.

The Avs gutted out a win, giving up just the one goal in a 5-on-3 situation but killing off the other four Flames power plays (one was abbreviated at the end of the game as Nazem Kadri was called for high-sticking with just 15 seconds left).

On the flip side, Colorado scored on two of their three power plays, meaning no goals were scored at even strength.

Calgary’s power play is ninth this year and their penalty kill was fourth coming into the game but is down to fifth after it ended. That is to say, even without several key pieces to those units, the Avs battled to a scoreless tie at even strength and then dominated the special teams battle.

Now, none of this is possible without Darcy Kuemper’s continued brilliance. He allowed just the one goal and there’s a chance (it was hard to tell on the replays) that even that goal deflected in off Artturi Lehkonen, who was playing his first game in 10 days and first with the Avalanche.

All the cards were in Calgary’s favor, and Colorado simply outplayed them.

With two of the top ten scorers in the entire league in their lineup, Calgary managed just 17 scoring chances and seven high-danger chances at 5v5. Colorado’s defense, missing two of their top-four defensemen, shut down the Flames attack that scored NINE goals at even strength against Edmonton over the weekend.

I was very curious how the Avalanche would handle this two-game road trip to Minnesota and Calgary, especially with MacKinnon’s absence in the Flames game. They ended up pulling three of four points from the trip and enhancing their standing atop the west. They are still 14 points ahead of the Wild, who have won seven games in a row and gained just four points of ground on the Avalanche despite going 8-1-1 in their last 10 games.

This is just an impressive Avalanche team. I don’t know what else to say about them right now. They’re losing key players to injury and still finding ways to beat good teams who have a lot more to play for than the Avs do right now.

We’ll see if they can keep this up and all, but after 67 games of this level of play, why believe they’re about to hit the wall now?

TAKEAWAYS

• The even-strength scoring has slowed considerably in the last couple of weeks for Colorado but with the absences in the lineup, I think that’s to be expected. The power play has picked up the slack and even with the loss of MacKinnon, it scored twice tonight. Val Nichushkin’s two goals drive home how valuable he is as the ultimate jack-of-all-trades in Colorado’s forward lineup. Nichushkin occasionally looks like he’s struggling to make some of the high-end plays his linemates are making around him and the Avs have certainly missed some great scoring chances because of those limitations, but he’s so smart and relentless that he just keeps making good things happen when he’s on the ice. He is the ultimate reclamation project gone right.
• This was exactly the kind of game the Avalanche got Josh Manson for and I thought that he was spectacular tonight. I say spectacular but I really mean spectacular for him specifically. That was his ceiling. He was great with his stick defensively and him jumping into the play tells you he’s going to have the confidence to activate in Colorado’s system the way they ask the other D to chip in offensively. With three shots on goal, he actually led the Avalanche defense in shots tonight and he added three more hits to his total. This was everything Colorado imagined they’d be getting when they traded for him. More of this and the Avs will be over the moon with the deal.
• I haven’t talked a lot about him recently but cannot say enough good things about Darcy Kuemper. Since December 1, he is second among NHL starters in save percentage (.933, behind only Vezina favorite Igor Shesterkin’s .937) and leads the NHL in shutouts with five. He is 22-4-3 in that time. He’s proving he’s the real deal. The playoffs will ultimately determine how Kuemper’s story plays out in Colorado but Kuemper’s excellence shows up in the advanced goaltender metrics, too, which is something that did not happen for Philipp Grubauer last year. It will be very interesting if Colorado’s success is what holds back Kuemper from being a Vezina finalist or if the voters give him his proper due and recognize Kuemper’s excellence is a major part of Colorado’s success. I hope he gets his due.