Overtime gaffe gives Avalanche first loss of the season

Every game tells its own story and through the first five games of the season, the story came down to finishing. After going 5-0 and not trailing in a third period all season, the Avalanche found themselves in a new situation.

How teams respond to adversity and what they look like when trailing changes from year to year and having not been there this season, was a total unknown.

Matt Calvert scored on a bit of a broken play just minutes into the game to pot another goal for the Dad Line, Colorado’s fourth line of veterans who absolutely would shut down the house party if it carried on beyond 10 pm.

When Matt Nieto slid a puck from the boards to the center of the ice, Kris Letang’s inexplicable abdication of defensive responsibilities left Calvert alone and he banged it home past Matt Murray for the lead.

Honestly, that goal might have been the last time the Avs had any real jump until the start of the third period.

J.T. Compher missed the net entirely on a breakaway and Tyson Jost put a puck into Murray’s chest on an odd-man rush and those missed opportunities loomed large when the Penguins got going themselves.

Sidney Crosby dropped some signature brilliance on the Avalanche despite it clearly being too many men on the ice but that’s life sometimes and Crosby turned Sam Girard inside out before beating Philipp Grubauer with his trademark backhand to tie the game.

The Penguins continued their momentum into the second period and Jake Guentzel took advantage of Ryan Graves’s poor footspeed and walked around him. While Graves tried to recover, he was unable to keep Guentzel from getting from his backhand to forehand and Guentzel potted one just under the crossbar to make it 2-1 Penguins heading into the third period.

The unknown of trailing didn’t last long as Colorado’s top line made its first major impact of the game when Mikko Rantanen found Nathan MacKinnon wide open after another Letang abandonment and MacKinnon tied the game.

That tie carried through the remainder of a third period that only picked up in intensity and took the Avs into overtime, the area that was the bane of their existence last season but where they won against Arizona last weekend.

A tense overtime period eventually found its way to an Avalanche power play after Brian Dumoulin lumberjack chopped Cale Makar’s stick out of his hands.

The ensuing PP was nothing short of a disaster, however, as the Avs failed to record any shots on goal and gave up a shorthanded goal when Brandon Tanev threw a puck near the net that bounced off Gabe Landeskog and into his own net.

It is a pretty ignominious way to lose your first game of the season but given Colorado was nowhere near their proverbial “A game” and were on the road, it’s hard to be too upset about getting one of the two available points.

It wasn’t quite the happy ending the Avs were looking for but the middle road is better than being road blocked, I suppose.

GAME TAKEAWAYS

• This was easily the most lethargic the Avalanche has looked all season. Their game against Arizona was more about the Coyotes imposing their will and defensive vice grip around Colorado’s explosiveness. Tonight was a lot more about the Avs just not having their legs and having “one of those nights”.
• MacKinnon took a big hit from Patric Hornqvist in the first period that appeared to give MacKinnon a charley horse to work through. He struggled with it until late in the second period when he looked like he had found his trademark acceleration.
• It was an intriguing lineup decision to put Mark Barberio in over Nikita Zadorov but credit to Barberio, who I felt played his best game of the season tonight. I don’t imagine Zadorov will be out long and if Bednar is going to rotate based on performance, this would be a tough game to remove either Barberio or Graves.
• Grubauer’s incredibly strong finish and now stout start makes me wonder how in the world we ever saw the guy we did last year. He was just so awful and it seemed to make no sense then, even less now. Goaltending.
• Colorado’s fourth line was great through two periods. I didn’t see much of an impact in the third but given how stuck in the mud the rest of the team was, they were big.
• It’s amazing how Colorado’s fourth line has gone from the white knuckle group from last season to one that has driven a lot of the team’s success so far this season. Very interesting transformation.
• This is the second time in the last year I can remember the Avs losing in OT thanks to a SHG. The other was in St. Louis when Ryan O’Reilly (of course) scored on a clean breakaway.
• The reality is Colorado’s PP remains an extremely divisive topic. It’s hard to argue with results and coming into tonight they were 10th in the NHL in PP success rate. But wow was whatever that was in the extra session bad. Downright awful. Like “flip a chair during the video session” bad.
• Colorado is now 1-0-1 on their season-long six-game road trip as they head to Sunrise to take on the Florida Panthers on Friday in the first game of a Florida-based back-to-back.