Familiar struggles sink Avalanche in return from hockey blackout

Coming into the post-bye week, Colorado had a few goals to accomplish in the final 33 games of the regular season as they work they way towards a third consecutive playoff appearance.

Get some consistency from goaltending, sharpen the special teams, and get the top line playing like the top line again.

In a 6-3 loss to the Philadelphia Flyers, the Avs saw a little of those things happen but some of them certainly went the wrong way.

In what is becoming far too familiar, Colorado lost the special teams battle, giving up goals on the PK and PP, both in brutal fashion that will probably keep Philipp Grubauer up tonight.

And that was the other story – Grubauer had a shaky finish to the first half of the season, providing ample doubt that he’s a legitimate starter in this league, let alone one prepared to help a Stanley Cup contender along the way.

While Grubauer was absolutely hung out to dry on multiple occasions tonight, trailing 4-3 while on a power play in the final five minutes of the third period, Grubauer failed to come up with what should have been a relatively easy save.

Kevin Hayes almost appeared to flub his shot and it found a cozy home behind Grubauer via his five hole and the short-handed goal made it 5-3 and pushed the game out of reach for the Avalanche.

Colorado, now 0-11-1 when trailing after two periods, continues to show they are a team built to bury teams when ahead and not fight back from deficits. While they climbed out of multiple two-goal deficits from 2-0, 3-1, and 4-2 to get within one each time, they were unable to capitalize on chances to tie the game.

Perhaps no chance was better than J.T. Compher’s clean breakaway in the third period just moments after Andre Burakovsky had made it 4-3 but Alex Lyon, the true star of this game, came up huge.

Lyon, making his second start of the season and 15th of his NHL career, stopped 28 of 31 shots and came up big time and time again.

It wasn’t hard to notice the contrast between the two netminders as Grubauer came up with some big saves of his own but also finished the game with a save percentage of just .815 after surrendering five goals on just 27 shots.

Lyon’s play in the first period was especially notable as the Avalanche started the game on fire and dominated long stretches of the opening frame but couldn’t solve Lyon.

Colorado’s reward for its strong first period play was trailing 2-0 after a puck went in off Sam Girard’s shin pads for the first goal of the game and Kevin Hayes redirected a puck past a poke-checking Grubauer with just over five seconds remaining in the period.

While Colorado would push back, as mentioned above, they never tied the game. Hard to win in the NHL when you spend all game chasing.

After having 11 days off, Colorado will now spend the next two days in Philadelphia hanging out before heading to Buffalo on Monday afternoon as they prepare to take on the Sabres on Tuesday night.

GAME TAKEAWAYS

• Colorado’s unexpected duo of Ryan Graves and Cale Makar was pretty terrible in this one. They each had brutal turnovers that led to goals against and Makar’s defense on the third Philadelphia goal was something that will absolutely be highlighted in a video session tomorrow morning. As a combination, their overall play couldn’t overcome the big mistakes made as they were on the ice for three of the goals against.
• Makar still managed to get an assist. He is the sole placeholder for Colorado’s rookie scoring record among defensemen and is now tied with Bruce Bell for franchise history. A nice accomplishment that was a formality at this point. Good for him. I can promise you he won’t care at all given the game it came in.
• I’m not making too much of Grubauer’s performance tonight but it was absolutely disappointing. The only goal I really struggled with was the fifth one. The others, good lord the defense has to do significantly better in front of him to help him out. Goalies aren’t readily available at the trade deadline and any machinations of the Avs making a big splash at that position are likely more fantasy than anything else. The track record of those deals is very short and hard to close. Grubauer has to figure this out.
• The special teams were as complicated as ever tonight. Colorado scored on its first power play, a beautiful passing play that left Mikko Rantanen wide open. The second PP was also very good but they couldn’t finish. That happens sometimes. If they played like they did during that second PP the majority of the time, this would be a top-ten PP unit. The third PP was the abbreviated one where Makar’s poor pass to Burakovsky kickstarted the Hayes-led two on one that resulted in a SHG that basically ended the game. That’s gotta stop. Bad, lazy hockey. Blame rust if you want but the players expect more from themselves than that. Bad.
• The PK had its moments in trying to kill off a double-major against MacKinnon in the first period. They almost did it but scored on with five seconds left. The Avs had a chance to clear the puck when three of them had a chance at the puck but Matt Nieto weakly backhanded the puck to the blueline and they scored just seconds later. That’s gotta stop. Matt Calvert got away with it but he also failed a clearing attempt when he backhanded a puck up the middle that was knocked down and kept in the zone. Can’t make those mistakes. Can’t.
• Rantanen getting on the board was good. He was better than we’ve seen as he was involved in some dangerous scoring chances. If the Avs are going to seriously make a run for the Central Division crown, he needs to be riding shotgun in piling up points next to Nathan MacKinnon and Gabe Landeskog. Those guys have to get going.
• MacKinnon didn’t have any points but was a catalyst in multiple goals tonight. He had a couple of very dangerous individual moments, per usual. It was weird seeing him almost human at times, though. Buffalo might want to watch out on Tuesday because MacKinnon usually responds to mediocre performances with the fire and fury of a thousand burning suns.