MacKinnon’s dominance drives Avalanche to easy road win over Chicago

Division games are always statement games.

Coming into today’s afternoon affair, Colorado had struggled with the teams in front of them in the Central Division but had taken care of its limited business against the teams chasing them.

Following a 5-2 win against the lowly Chicago Blackhawks, the Avs move to 3-1 on the season against the teams currently in the bottom of the division. With Minnesota also winning today, the Blackhawks now inhabit last place in the division.

All of that means the Avs, a team with legitimate title contention aspirations, need to find ways to take care of business against the bottom feeders of the league.

Despite being outshot in Chicago today, the Avs showed off their arsenal of offensive firepower as they struggled to generate shots but not chances.

Nobody struggled more than Corey Crawford, however, who gave up five goals on 14 shots through the first two periods as the Avalanche built a commanding lead and coasted to a victory with a strong defensive effort in the third period.

Colorado embracing ‘the turtle’ and going into a safe defensive shell and letting the other team rack up offensive opportunities is something we’ve seen more than they’d like.

Today, however, they put in a professional performance and geared down what had been a blistering offensive pace and tightened the defensive screws on the Blackhawks in the third period.

For a team with as many injuries as the Avs, their ability to scrape out wins has been vital to them staying relevant in the standings. The formula for overcoming the injuries has been the same since Mikko Rantanen and Gabe Landeskog both went down early in the year; score first, build a lead and don’t look back.

The Avs got on the board first again today when Nathan MacKinnon tipped home a point shot from J.T. Compher to give them the 1-0 lead under a minute into the contest.

Ryan Graves jumped into the offense and made it 2-0 just minutes later and a dominant scoring first period ended with Colorado leading 3-1 thanks to a Cale Makar goal on the power play. MacKinnon finished the first period with three points.

With that lead, Colorado continued to be opportunistic and eventually built a 5-1 lead until a late Chicago goal cut the lead to 5-2 going into the third.

From there, the Avs ground the game to a halt and actually outshot the Blackhawks 9-7 in the third period. That’s how you close a game. If the Avs can continue to learn this is the kind of execution that finishes off teams, they will get even more dangerous moving forward.

The two teams meet again tomorrow night in Denver as they complete a home-and-home series. The Avalanche expect to get Mikko Rantanen back from injury.

GAME TAKEAWAYS

• Nathan MacKinnon is nothing short of spectacular. I wrote about this in this section of the last game but what he’s doing in comparison to the Edmonton and Boston duos at the top of the scoring race is unbelievable. At various points this season, Matt Calvert and Matt Nieto have taken turns alongside MacKinnon and it hasn’t kept him from doing his thing. A four-point night, while he’s rotating around the lineup with a constant churn of linemates, is incredible.
• MacKinnon should be the leader in the Hart Trophy clubhouse. But it’s too early to really be getting into all of that.
• Cale Makar’s goal is obviously going to push MacKinnon and Gabe Landeskog for best rookie seasons in recent Avalanche history but I’m wondering if he can push for Paul Stastny’s 78-point mark now. With his eighth goal today, he also could be in contention for the very rare 20-goal season by a defenseman. His 26 points through 25 games is an absurd stat line. He’s crazy.
• Maybe the craziest part of the game today was whatever that was from Val Nichushkin. Off a face-off won by Chicago, Nichushkin stole the puck and flew down the ice in rocket-powered skates and beat Crawford for his second goal of the season. It was a stunning goal just from the perspective of having never seen Nichushkin display THAT kind of speed before. Confidence is a hell of a drug.
• J.T. Compher is a Chicago killer. After today, he has eight points in 11 career games against them. If you’re going to slay a particular team, a division opponent is always ideal. Before this, his best success against a division opponent was actually Minnesota. The Wild and Blackhawks are two fun teams to have success against. Keep doing that.
• Pavel Francouz got back in net today and looked rock solid. The Avs were outshot pretty heavily as they built their lead and this looked an awful lot like the game against Tampa Bay earlier this year where Colorado was badly outshot but dominated on the scoreboard and Francouz held strong in a tough road environment. Colorado’s goaltending continues to be a plus.
• This home-and-home series with Chicago had a chance to really change the landscape of the Central division. Had Chicago won both games in regulation, they would have closed the gap behind the Avs to just one point. If Colorado wins both in regulation, they will lead Chicago by nine points. That’s a huge difference and a great indicator of why you have to win division games.
• Another strong game from Ryan Graves who scored a goal and threw down with pesky Andrew Shaw in the first five minutes of the game. The goal was a great example of his high hockey IQ and the fight an example of his willingness to chuck the knucks when someone wants to step to him. That’s two very strong performances for Graves in a row after a bit of a lull.
• Patrick Kane’s goal extended his scoring streak to 14 straight games. Amazing a player can be so productive and just not have it matter in the results.
• It was interesting today that both teams rested their starting goalies in favor of backups. Both teams are also in the position of having pretty good backups so far this year so it’s a rare luxury to roll with. Lehner v. Grubauer tomorrow night at Pepsi Center should be a fun battle.