Philipp Grubauer is Colorado’s goaltender of today and tomorrow

When we talk about how goaltenders are voodoo, this is the stuff we’re talking about. There were no signs of this coming. Following a dominant home win on January 4 against the New York Rangers, Philipp Grubauer started three games in the span of a month, giving up 16 goals (!) in those starts.

At that point, Semyon Varlamov had regained his form and had taken back the net that has been his for the last eight years. It was looking more and more like Varlamov had fended off the strongest challenger to his time atop the Avalanche netminder throne.

And in the blink of an eye, all of that has been undone.

After giving up five goals against Columbus on February 5, the Avalanche would not turn to Grubauer as a starter again until they absolutely had to in a grueling back-to-back against Chicago and Nashville.

Out of nowhere, Grubauer shutout the Predators with a virtuoso 38-save performance, easily his best showing in an Avs uniform. It was the first in a five-start set that saw him give up just four goals in total.

Tonight’s shutout against the New Jersey Devils was his third of the season and ninth of his career. With Varlamov again leaving the door open with four goals given up against the putrid Anaheim Ducks two nights ago, Grubauer simply stepped through and took advantage of his opportunity.

“The guys in front of me make it really easy to see some pucks,” Grubauer said. “You look at the last period, we gave up like three or four shots, I don’t know. Not many. You’ve got to simplify your game if it’s not working. Simplifying it and take every situation by situation. We need more wins so it was a good win today.”

He brought up a good point that the team in front of him made life easy for him once again today. Grubauer faced just 22 shots today with just five allowed in the final frame, which the Avalanche entered with a two-goal lead. Instead of sitting back and switching into a classic “turtle” the Avalanche simply geared the game down to trading neutral zone possessions and kept the scoring chances to a minimum.

This was similar to what Grubauer faced against the Buffalo Sabres last weekend when he had faced just nine shots on goal through the game’s first 52 minutes. He ended up with an 18-save shutout, certainly one of the easiest nights of his NHL career in a dominant defensive performance from the Avalanche.

In between those cakewalk shutouts, however, was a great night against the Carolina Hurricanes where he was simply bested by Petr Mrazek having one of the best nights of his career and the two goals allowed by Grubauer on 32 shots was enough to sink the Avalanche. Instead of getting down on the results, Grubauer kept his mind on the process that had produced such solid results recently.

“Just got to simplify your game,” he said. “Sometimes I think you do too much and sometimes you’ve got to do more and it’s been working out.”

The focus on his mindset and keeping it simple has propelled him back into the driver’s seat of a goaltender battle that has been nothing short of a disappointment all season. Despite the slow start to his Colorado career, Grubauer has clearly found his legs and with two years left on his contract (versus the free agency Varlamov faces this summer), it couldn’t have come at a better time for securing a job going into next season.

“Like I said, we need wins,” Grubauer said following the win over the Devils. “That was a good step in the right direction. We can’t hope for another team to lose for us to get in. We’ve got to keep playing the right way and every shift for every guy matters.”

In the case of today’s shutout, he largely credited his teammates for keeping it clear in front of him and allowing him to track the play accordingly.

“You’ve got to be aware who is on the ice and where they come from and what the play is going to look like,” Grubauer said. “You’ve got to read the game. I think the guys make it really easy for me to let me read the game.”

It has taken much longer than Colorado’s management was hoping, but it looks like Grubauer just might have taken the job just in the nick of time. His next trick? Get this team into the playoffs.

Takeaways from the game

• While Grubauer didn’t face too much in the way of volume, he made one magnificent stop early in the second period when the game was still tied at zero when he went side to side and made a huge stop. He faced just five high-danger chances and 13 scoring chances all day so it wasn’t a heavy workload but he was still up to the task.
• Nathan MacKinnon’s thunder was stolen a bit because of Grubauer’s third shutout in five starts but his goal and assist tonight pushed him past 90 points, just the second time in Avalanche history an Avs player has recorded back to back 90-point seasons. Peter Forsberg was the other guy to get it done.
• Tyson Barrie had a two-goal game and was just the second start and almost an afterthought given the accomplishments of Grubauer and MacKinnon. The second goal was pure luck and the first was 90% MacKinnon’s brilliance but Barrie finished it off and he gets full marks for that. The goals gave him nine on the season as he chases down a double-digit goal season for the fifth time in his career. He did break the 50-point barrier for the third time in his career.
• I thought Colorado’s seven D lineup today worked like a charm. The fourth line has been a mess for a while so instead of playing someone simply for the sake of playing him, why not slide a guy like Ryan Graves back into the lineup and see if you can spark something positive while also allowing your other six D to get a little more rest than they might otherwise enjoy. It worked very well in my opinion as no Avalanche defenseman broke 20 minutes played and everyone played their role pretty well today. Not a single Avalanche defender was negative in Corsi at 5v5 play.
• Speaking of, there was a conversation on Twitter during the game about Tyson Jost pre-AHL stint and post. I went and ran the numbers pretty quickly for his post-AHL games and he was at 54% CF coming into today’s game. The 76% (16 CF, 5 CA) is only going to push that impressive number higher. It’s a reminder that while the points are still slow to come, the process he’s putting out there has improved significantly. These are very positive steps forward as he’s earning more consistent ice time and putting more pucks at the net on his own. His shot generation (29 shots in 17 games) would produce 139 shots on goal across an 82-game pace. That’s decent but still not quite the kind of offense you’re looking for from him. All of this is to say things have definitely gotten better for Jost but there’s still a ton of room for improvement.
• It’s been interesting watching Mikko Rantanen adjust to life without MacKinnon. He’s starting to grow into a more confident and aggressive player with the puck. While next to MacKinnon most of this season, I felt like Rantanen had developed some passive habits that were preventing him from fully understanding just what a special offensive player he really is. With being forced to be the primary driver of a line away from #29, I think we’re starting to see Rantanen show some real growth in helping become the driver of a line versus an extremely high-end passenger. I can’t help but wonder if the next logical step is to combine the last two bullet points and put Jost and Rantanen on a line together and see what kind of offense they’re able to produce together.