Nazem Kadri powers Avalanche offense as Hunter Miska gets first NHL win

Goalies, man. They’re weird, unpredictable creatures even in the best of times. If you look at the numbers right now, goaltenders with a save percentage under .900 include Sergei Bobrovsky, Braden Holtby, Tuukka Rask, Carey Price, Robin Lehner, Carter Hart, and Ilya Sorokin.

That’s a lot of hardware and two of the brightest young goaltenders in the game today. Even at the tip-top of the goaltender iceberg, you just aren’t entirely sure what you’re getting.

Get into backups, the certainty goes down. Get into third goaltenders, and you’re in completely unknown territory.

Enter Hunter Miska, the surprise backup goaltender for the Colorado Avalanche this year. Miska entered the year as Colorado’s third goaltender behind Pavel Francouz, who got hurt right before the team’s first road trip of the season and hasn’t been seen since.

Miska’s first two starts weren’t great but the Avs pulled one of four possible points from them. After this third start, a 3-2 win tonight at the Arizona Coyotes, the Avs are up to three of six possible points in Miska’s starts.

The numbers sure aren’t pretty as Miska is rocking a cool .883 save percentage and 3.03 goals-against-average but the 1-1-1 record is ultimately all that matters when you’re talking about living life with your third goaltender.

For Miska, it’s a milestone that seemed a lifetime away back when he signed an AHL contract with the Colorado Eagles before the start of the 2019-20 season after the Coyotes organization decided to move on from him.

It was a humbling moment for Miska, who had been the star goaltender at college powerhouse Minnesota-Duluth before turning pro. When he got into Colorado’s organization, he was a player with few expectations.

He wrestled away the starter job for the Eagles and had a great year, earning him de facto third goaltender status going into this season for the Avs. Francouz’s injury meant he had to step in right away and while it hasn’t been a dominant showing, the Avs got the job done with him in net tonight.

You can either focus on the first 58 minutes of the game, a shutout for Miska, or the final two minutes where he nearly blew a 3-0 lead in a game where he faced just 18 shots. In the end, it doesn’t really matter.

Hunter Miska got the first win of his NHL career and there isn’t a thing anybody can say or do to take that away from him. He’ll forever go into the history books as a guy who backstopped an NHL win. At 25, maybe there’s more of that to come. Maybe not.

Nobody really knows for sure. But on this night, he was just good enough to backstop the Avalanche to victory and that’s worth Avalanche fans celebrating for a night.

TAKEAWAYS

• The Avs were dominant defensively in this game. Despite the lead and the late Arizona push, the Avs still somehow outshot the Coyotes 9-8 in the third period. Score effects just never really kicked in tonight and the Avs should have honestly won this game running away. The late two goals might be a confidence boost to Arizona going into tomorrow’s game but the Avs can’t let them matter. Before they were scored, going back to Games 4 and 5 of their playoff series last year, the Avs had outscored the Coyotes 17-2 in their last three matchups. I guess even counting the goals, 17-4 isn’t that much better from Arizona’s perspective. It could’ve been even worse, too, what with the Avs having a 28-13 advantage in scoring chances at 5v5 and Nathan MacKinnon hitting the post on a breakaway.
• Credit to Adin Hill for making the Avs work for it but you just can’t shake the feeling the Avs are on the verge of blowing somebody out. They just keep creating too many quality chances and have too many good goal scorers on the roster to watch them continue to struggle this hard to make hay. Looking for the perfect shot is a classic symptom of lack of confidence but the Avs sure appeared to get some of that mojo back tonight. It’ll be interesting to see if tomorrow’s game is the same kind of dominance or how much the Avs push back.
• It was interesting to see the Coyotes try to get physical with the Avs and Colorado responded by slapping it down. Conor Garland literally got bodyslammed by Gabe Landeskog for initiating a post-whistle scrum around the net. Drake Caggiula enticed Bowen Byram into dropping the gloves and fighting. Who would have thought Byram would have had an NHL fight before his first NHL goal? The fight also put Byram one minute ahead of Ryan Graves as the PIMs leader on the Avalanche. You love Byram’s willingness to stick up for himself as he’s been asked to do it several times in recent games and has responded. You don’t love the minor penalties he keeps taking, however, as he leads the Avs with seven, but his physicality is another sign that he was absolutely ready for the NHL leap.
• The Avs need a few of their guys to get off the scoring slump and tonight helped with that. Nazem Kadri’s roller coaster continues but with a three-point night, this was a reminder of what a difference-maker he can be when he’s on his game. Mikko Rantanen and Andre Burakovsky getting goals should really help, too, as they are Colorado’s two purest shooters and had been ice cold for the last handful of games. The Avalanche offense will go as those guys do so seeing them beat Adin Hill was an important development.
• Cale Makar is awesome and Sam Girard is an ankle-snap waiting to happen with his skating but watching Devon Toews on this defense is a real marvel. We’ve seen all of Kadri, Burakovsky, and Brandon Saad take time to fit into Colorado’s identity when they arrived. Toews, however, required no adjustments. He dropped into the Avalanche defense and has been an absolutely perfect fit. Watching some of his work on the PK tonight was a treat because he’s so good with his stick. His combination of skill, skating, and stickwork all pop. Player acquisition can be a tricky thing because what makes a player effective in one place does not always translate to another organization but Toews has made a seamless transition with the Avalanche. A nod to an excellent bit of pro scouting by Colorado.
• Jost, Bellemare, and Nichushkin all had decent scoring chances again tonight. You just feel like eventually that dam has to break like it did for Nichushkin last year and goals start dropping all over the place.
• There seems to be some confusion with Matt Calvert, who took warm-ups and then did not play. Avs PR let the media know it was an upper-body injury and then Jared Bednar said in his postgame presser it was lower-body. The Avs followed up and re-confirmed it was upper-body and Bednar misspoke at his presser. The concern is obviously ongoing issues with concussions. We talked about it on the podcast but you only hope for the best for Calvert and if these concussion issues continue to linger, he might start considering life after hockey. He’s a damn warrior and one of the easiest players to root for in Avalanche history but if he’s struggling to make it through warm-ups…well, it’s not a good sign. All the best to Calvert, who is one of the game’s finest human beings.