Goaltending and depth scoring are paving the way for Avalanche success

Let’s talk about perseverance. When the Colorado Avalanche started the season 0-4, it felt like hell. Their goaltending was horrific, their body language sucked, and the injuries were so bad that it didn’t feel like there would be a light at the end of the tunnel until about Game 20.

After tonight’s 5-2 win over the Seattle Kraken, the Avalanche walk into the Christmas break a much healthier team and one who has won seven of their last nine games. Their goaltending has taken an enormous leap from league-worst to…much better than that. It took changing both of the netminders to get there, but the Avs understand the window they are in.

This is their moment with Nathan MacKinnon, Cale Makar and Mikko Rantanen. In the case of Rantanen, who is a pending free agent after this season, it might be their last moment with him.

They still lead the league in WAR (wins above replacement) lost to injury this season and that doesn’t include the games missed by Val Nichushkin during his suspension. The Avs have lived 80 games worth of drama in just 36 games so far.

To my eye, they look worn down. They’re missing the extra gear that they have been able to find in previous seasons. I’m willing to attribute that to a stretch of 13 of 17 games on the road that saw them on the road for 26 of 34 days. They finally get their first break of more than two days since October 6, three days before the regular season began. They are tied for the league lead in games played.

This has been a grueling schedule overall, but here the Avs are in third place in the Central Division right now. They have more games played than the Winnipeg Jets and Minnesota Wild, who they are chasing, and more than the Dallas Stars and Utah Hockey Club, who are right behind Colorado.

Also notable to me? Colorado’s goal differential climbed out of the negatives and is now +1 on the season. As recently as December 6, they were -13. It is the first time this season they have been positive.

This has been a strong run of results for the Avalanche. It’s been driven by their three superstars and the significantly-improved goaltending, but that isn’t all.

Let’s talk about it.

Joel Kiviranta is turning into a dude

The second hat trick of Joel Kiviranta’s NHL career (we don’t talk about the first) was an amusing one from a Colorado perspective.

With the game tied 2-2 following two goals within 11 seconds of each other (one by both Seattle and Colorado), the Avs found themselves in the kind of dogfight they were certainly hoping to avoid against a Kraken team that played last night.

Both teams were playing their third game in four nights, however, so you could see the heavy legs setting in on both sides. It was disappointing the Avs weren’t really taking it to Seattle on the scoreboard, but the Kraken were struggling to generate many quality scoring chances.

Enter…Joel Kiviranta?

He got loose on a 2v1 rush opposite Rantanen, who made the kind of saucer pass you see finished off by the Mackinnon and Makars of the world. Kiviranta didn’t hesitate, whipping it to the top of the net to give the Avs a 3-2 lead. It’s a wicked finish.

He added two empty-net goals late in the third period to get an unexpected hat trick, but it also pushed his season goal total to a career-high 10. Five of those came in two games against the Kraken, so it would appear Kiviranta might be to Seattle what Nashville’s Colton Sissons is to Colorado: The unexpected menace.

The first of those empty-net goals came when he made a great read in the defensive zone. He finished the play at the other end and after that, it was just stat-padding fun for everyone.

You see the success, however, of lines that don’t include Nathan MacKinnon. Rantanen had an assist on Kiviranta’s first goal. Parker Kelly added another assist tonight following his shorthanded goal last game. Even the much-maligned Casey Mittelstadt has a handful of points in the last week.

MacKinnon and Rantanen are 1-2 in the NHL in scoring right now and Makar leads all NHL defensemen while being eighth in the league in scoring himself.

Colorado’s success on any given night starts with those guys. Of course it does. Things change completely, however, when they are getting contributions from elsewhere in the lineup. We have seen that for a while now and it’s an undeniable piece of why Colorado is has won seven of nine games.

Oh, also this guy.

Mackenzie Blackwood has the right stuff

The team’s save percentage was .865 when Mackenzie Blackwood was acquired. It is now .876. That isn’t an astronomical leap, but they went from being by far in last place to being in 30th. It’s moving in the right direction, okay?

For Blackwood, he had his worst start (statistically) as a member of the Avs, allowing two goals on 19 shots on goal. The first goal is an ugly defensive breakdown I’ll talk about tomorrow in Studs & Duds. The second goal is the first goal Blackwood has allowed that I’ve thought was all on Blackwood. He just fell asleep on the faceoff and wasn’t expecting the shot that beat him.

But that’s where it stopped. With the Avs nursing a one-goal lead in the third period, he stuffed a breakaway chance from Jaden Schwartz. He made a couple more stops on good scoring chances, including one where he was diving to his left. He was in control and great when he needed to be.

This was a classic Avs defensive game where the shots allowed weren’t many, but the ones that got through were good looks. He was the man. Tonight is much more of what his tenure in Colorado should look like than the heroic efforts of his first few games here. In four games with the Avs, he is 3-1 with a .931 save percentage.

What really caught my eye, though, was not what Blackwood did on the ice. It was what Avalanche head coach Jared Bednar said after the game about him.

“He’s got that starter’s attitude. There are goals that have gone in on him already since we’ve been here and I’m like, ‘Yup, no chance.’ He immediately starts watching video and he feels like he should have had it. ‘I was too deep here, I didn’t read it fast enough there.’

He’s really competitive and hard on himself. It’s never anyone else’s fault. He understands he’s the last line of defense and he expects to stop every puck. He doesn’t get hard on himself when he doesn’t, not that I’ve seen so far anyway. I’m sure he wanted that faceoff one back tonight that slips through. It’s a quick shot, bang bang.

But at the end of the day, when you have that type of attitude and you’re taking responsibility for every puck that goes in regardless of what’s happened in front of you, you’re going to be in a good spot to improve and get better.”

I’m not going to sit here and pretend that isn’t a not-so-subtle shot at Alexandar Georgiev, who we saw grapple with his own combustive personality and the impact it had on his relationship with his teammates.

Bednar sees Blackwood as a breath of fresh air. His play certainly has been so far.

Cale Makar, still a superstar for the Avalanche

Lost in some of this was that Makar quietly had a three-point night of his own. It began with a power-play goal in the first period but he picked up assists on Kiviranta’s first and third goals, too.

The second assist that made it 5-2 might be fun stat-padding, but so what? We’ve all seen teams blow two-goal leads late in games before (remember the Nashville game last season?).

Makar was excellent once again versus the Kraken, whose fan base obsessively insists on booing him because they think he’s a big meany mean face.

Makar’s shot metrics are actually on the negative side tonight, but on his own he was all over the place. While he had 11 shot attempts and seven shots on goal, he only had one scoring chance and one high-danger chance. That was not his goal, by the way, as he scored on a soft wrister from the point.

Daccord couldn’t pick the puck up thanks to Nichushkin’s big body providing a screen, but that’s part of the brilliance of Makar. His ability to get pucks through traffic and on net is one his his superpowers.

He’s up to 45 points on the season, which comes out to an 82-game pace of 102 points. It would be fun to see him get there, but I do hope his defensive zone play comes back around a bit. It was not great in this game, but it should be noted that his assist that kickstarted the 2v1 between Rantanen and Kiviranta was Makar outplaying old friend Andre Burakovsky in the defensive zone, so it wasn’t all bad.

I’ll be back tomorrow to get into Studs & Duds.