Offensive balance is suddenly the powering the Avalanche attack

The Colorado Avalanche topped the Florida Panthers, 7-4, in a game whose score is deceiving about the pace of play that actually took place. The scoring chances and high-danger chances from this game make it seem more like a 2-1 kind of game, but some lucky bounces and plain old quality were finishing along the way that helped the score reach the heights it did.

After trailing at the end of another first period, this time 2-1, the Avs exploded in the second period to take a 5-2 lead. There were a couple of meaningless goals late in the game by each team and we ended up at a 7-4 final and moved the Avs to 3-0 on their current four-game road trip. What stood out along the path to the outcome?

Avs defense finds the offense

How many times have you been reading something about the Avalanche in the last three seasons (including this one) and heard how the Avs are “just a one-line team”?

I’ve spent that time trying to push back by saying that Colorado’s defense acts as a pseudo second line because it is consistently among the highest-scoring groups in the NHL. Led by Cale Makar’s brilliance and the steady production of Devon Toews, we’ve seen a lot of points racked up by that Avs defense over the years.

So far, this season has been a little different. Makar has been world-class, of course, but Toews had just five points through his first 16 games as he’s battled injuries since the start of the season. Sam Girard has helped pick up the slack with 10 points through 20 games, but the scoring from this blueline was largely coming from Makar.

Tonight was a very different story as Makar, Toews, Girard, and Oliver Kylington all had two-point games. Girard’s goal was a lucky bounce but the rest of that production was for real. Kylington, especially, needed something to start going well after a disastrous start to his Avalanche tenure.

Kylington made an excellent outlet pass that sprung Logan O’Connor, who promptly rocketed a puck past Sergei Bobrovsky for a goal that both players badly needed. Later on, Kylington’s increased confidence led to him jumping into the offense again and he roofed a puck that made the score 6-3 and essentially ended the competitive portion of the game late in the third period.

Your favorite hockey scout’s favorite player, Toews is easy to underappreciate at times with his disruptive play not making many highlights but tonight we saw the two-way work that has come to define his game. He was excellent at denying zone entries, breaking up rushes in the neutral zone, and finished with two assists.

Not on the score sheet but a guy who made several key defensive plays? Sam Malinski, who I would like to write about more very soon. He’s been a revelation this season and was strong again tonight.

Avs find balance with improved health

The other part of having more than scoring line is, you know, getting goals from lines beyond just the centered by Nathan MacKinnon. Many people, myself included, have thirsted over the idea of seeing Mikko Rantanen trying to drive a line away from MacKinnon to give the Avs better balance at the top of their forward lineup.

With Artturi Lehkonen, Jonathan Drouin, and Val Nichushkin all coming back in the last couple of weeks, we saw exactly that tonight as Nichushkin went with Rantanen and Casey Mittelstadt while Drouin and Lehkonen rocked with MacKinnon.

The result?

Colorado’s top line got two goals, both from Drouin, Rantanen and Nichushkin both scored and combined for seven points, and O’Connor’s goal added a goal from the team’s third (fourth?) line.

Getting a seven-goal night and the only point from MacKinnon is an assist on Nichushkin’s empty-net goal is a box score bonanza for the Avs. Things won’t continue like this, of course, because no team is going to score 4+ goals per game even in this era, but it’s exactly the kind of multi-faceted attack that makes the Avs so much harder to defend.

Previously, if MacKinnon was struggling, the Avs were struggling. Instead, MacKinnon has six points in his last six games, with three of those coming in one game (versus Los Angeles). The Avs are 5-1 in those games.

Improved goaltending is, of course, playing a role in that record, but so is the balance the Avs are finding offensively. It isn’t a ton of difference, but that improved balance is also allowing the Avs to spread the minutes around a bit more as MacKinnon is averaging about two minutes less per game in the last four games, which coincides with the returns of Drouin and Nichushkin.

Speaking of Drouin and Nichushkin…

Those two had slow-ish returns from injury, which is no surprise given the amount of games they missed. Drouin got some cheap points along the way but Nichushkin had been struggling to generate much of a positive impact anywhere despite decent shot metrics.

Tonight, they made difference-making plays. Drouin got the team level at both 1-1 and 2-2 in similar ways as he was going to the net each time. The first goal hit off of his body as he was fighting for position in front of the net, the second a great find from Makar and Drouin waited out Bobrovsky to give himself an empty net to score into.

Nichushkin’s first assist was more fortune than anything as Rantanen and Girard did a lot of the heavy lifting to get the good-luck goal, but his work along the boards and perfect pass were vital aspects of Kylington’s goal. He got the empty-net goal so if you wanted to make the argument that his three-point night was more smoke and mirrors than him being a game-changing force, I’d hear that argument.

It has to start somewhere, though, and this was the kind of game that the Avs simply were not getting from players outside of MacKinnon before the cavalry arrived to give him some help. The return of these two (and Lehkonen) has drastically transformed Colorado’s offense.

Here is the flow of the game at and shot heatmaps at 5v5: