Homegrown talent propels Avs to victory over Kings

If you hopped into a time machine and traveled back to draft night in 2016 and watched the Avs select Tyson Jost with the 10th pick and then came back to 2021 without any knowledge of what happened in that time, seeing the Avs start the game with Jost centering Gabe Landeskog and Mikko Rantanen would not have been a far-fetched idea.

You might have had some questions along the way (like, you know, what happened to Matt Duchene and Nathan MacKinnon??) but ultimately it wouldn’t have been a shock to see Jost centering Colorado’s top line. That was kind of the idea back in 2016, after all.

Given how Jost’s career has gone to this point, however, it certainly was an eyebrow-raising lineup for the Avs to release as the team took the ice for warm-ups. Jost on the top line and no Nathan MacKinnon to be found as he was listed with a lower-body injury but is mostly about getting him rest before the postseason so lingering issues don’t become problems.

Then you scan the box score after Colorado’s 3-2 victory and you see goals from Jost, linemate Rantanen, and Cale Makar and it looks like potential realized. That’s Colorado’s first-round picks from 2015, 2016, and 2017 all scoring the goals that led them to victory.

A glance at the assists and you also find Conor Timmins (first pick of the second round in 2017) and Alex Newhook (Colorado’s “other” first round pick in 2019 after Bowen Byram) contributing.

Timmins snagging another assist and adding another strong game to his resume is a continuation of the strong play that started when the Avs returned from their second COVID break.

Newhook adding an assist was his first career point in the NHL. The elder statesman of this group is, hilariously, Rantanen, who scored his 30th goal of the season, at just 24-years-old.

One of the reasons I found this so striking on this night was Colorado’s opponent, the rebuilding Los Angeles Kings.

The Kings have one of the largest troves of prospects in the NHL, an enviable group for any franchise in the rebuilding stage. They are looking to use the next couple of years to transition that glut of high-end prospects into the NHL to blossom into impact players.

You know, like the ones that did the heavy-lifting for the Avalanche, a team with championship aspirations this season.

In reality, we know Newhook is only in his second NHL game and that Timmins has had more forgettable games than ones worth remembering to this point, though it’s noteworthy he’s trending in the right direction in a major way.

The stars of the show were Rantanen and Makar, whose two points pushed him to 41 in just 40 games. He’s the only NHL defenseman playing at a point-per-game pace this season and is just six points behind the highest-scoring defender (Adam Fox of the Rangers) despite playing in 14 fewer games than Fox.

But tonight the real moment was for Jost, the highly-regarded player whose start to his NHL career was a frustrating string of seasons that nearly saw him traded at least year’s trade deadline and has frequently seen him teetering on the edge of the lineup, his spot in the NHL coming more and more into question.

It was the high character that helped skyrocket Jost’s stock back at the NHL Combine in his draft year. That same character has played a vital role in helping him work through the identity crisis he’s suffered at the NHL so far.

Top prospects rarely have to reinvent themselves as early in their career as Jost did but he just kept working on his game and grinding his way to it. Colorado’s belief in him has finally appeared to pay off this year when he has blossomed into a legitimate NHL center, albeit one more suited for a third-line role than top billing.

The problem with Jost has always been production and at first blush, this season has been no different. His goal tonight gives him just five on the year (for reference, Makar’s goal was his seventh…as a defenseman) to go along with 10 assists.

15 points in 50 games certainly isn’t gearing anyone up to give him a Hart Trophy or anything but if you dig a little deeper, the breakout starts to become more obvious.

It was another glacial start for Jost offensively with three points in the first 26 games of the season. Nobody was anointing Jost at the time but there were obvious strides being made in his all-around game. He emerged as a top penalty killer and began to really settle in at the center position, the spot Jared Bednar had been reluctant to play him because of past struggles.

Jost found his game, however, and has scored 12 points in his last 24 games. Again, not world-beating numbers but that’s literally quadruple the production of his first 26 games.

His goal tonight was a laugher, an attempt at a pass off the goaltender’s pads that somehow just…went in…but Jost has been comically snakebitten the last few years. He’s earned a couple of freebies in his career.

In fact, it looks like Jost might have given his bad-luck crown to Timmins, who now is finding himself creating great scoring chances but suffering increasingly creative ways to botch them. If there’s any solace for Timmins, it’s simply looking at Jost’s entire NHL career. That first NHL goal will come for Timmins one of these days if he keeps playing at this high of a level.

On this night, the sting of losing their top center was all but forgotten because the young guns blasted their way to victory without him. For Tyson Jost, it was the culmination of years of hard work being rewarded in opportunity (and then production!).

For the Avs, it was just them loving when a plan comes together.

TAKEAWAYS

• I’m on grades duty tonight so I’ll leave a lot of my analysis nuggets in that piece tonight but I do want to use this space to marvel at how competitive the West Division has been at the end of the season. All three of Vegas, Colorado, and Minnesota are taking the chase for the first seed seriously but not too seriously (all teams are prioritizing health with lineup decisions). Each team just keeps winning and pushing each other to not falter. It’s the kind of competition that breeds greatness and is something I think is very healthy for the mindset of all three clubs as they enter the playoffs. It will be a true shame when two of these teams have to play in the first round. Of course, the division winner gets a suddenly-feisty Blues team and that isn’t a matchup that anybody will get excited about. I’m ready for this regular season to be over but I have appreciated this division winning its way to the end. Whoever emerges on top will have earned it the right way. This is not the 2013-14 Avs watching the Blues collapse over their last 10 games and sneak out the division title on the last day of the season. This division title will have been won.
• Hate that the Eagles are now shut down due to COVID issues. This is one of the most exciting groups of Avs prospects in Loveland in a very long time and that group was adding top goaltending prospect Justus Annunen to its group of netminders. I was very curious to see how he does. No word yet on the extent of the shutdown and how many games the Eagles will lose but they didn’t have many left to give away. I’m so bummed we have to wait and see what happens with those guys now.
• Patrik Nemeth went head-first into the boards and left the game and did not return. The good news came after the game as he was said not to have suffered a concussion but was sore. When you see a play like that, all thoughts about a player’s performance evaporates and you just hope he’s okay. That’s the kind of a fluke that could change the rest of a player’s life. Hope we find Nemo back in the lineup soon.