Punchless Avs drop a 1-0 snoozer to Devils

Every year as we wind our way through another season of Avalanche hockey, writing these postgame stories generally get broken into a couple of basic archetypes. You have blowouts (both good and bad), great games, comebacks (both good and bad), games everyone will forget later, and then the worst kind of game: the one where nobody knows what to say about it.

Tonight was that last archetype. In Colorado’s 1-0 loss to the New Jersey Devils, so little happened throughout the game that I’m not even sure what to say.

Here are a few of the thoughts I have after that game, which was decided on a Jack Hughes power-play goal at 2:59 of the third period. It’s probably a shot Pavel Francouz should have stopped, but it’s also the only goal he gave up so you can’t really bag on him for letting one measly goal in.

That goal made the Devils 1/3 on the power play while the Avalanche finished 0/6, including not converting in the final minute with Francouz on the bench and with a six-on-four advantage.

Colorado’s top line got beaten up at 5v5, one of the rare times they will get badly beaten in shot metrics that don’t include any score effects. Their league-leading scoring defense didn’t ever really get revved up as Cale Makar continues to struggle individually at 5v5 and everyone else wasn’t all that close to their “A” game tonight.

Combine that with the ongoing depth issues at forward, which were further made worse by Valeri Nichushkin’s absence tonight due to a lower-body injury, and you have an environment where the Avs managed just 24 shots on goal and got shutout by Vitek Vanecek.

Now, they only allowed 23 shots on goal but when you dig into the deeper numbers, you find a team that was outplayed pretty clearly. The Devils had the following advantages at 5v5:

• 45-32 Corsi
• 21-16 Shots on goal
• 21-14 scoring chances
• 13-5 high-danger chances

The Avs walked in with the league’s best power play, a unit so dominant through seven games that it had gotten to the finish line in a couple of their wins. With that group going scoreless, the big bright light moved its attention to the Avs’ issues at even strength, where they just haven’t been very good so far this season.

While Colorado’s big guns have the kind of gaudy overall stats you’d expect, they help cover some of the problems beyond just Nathan MacKinnon, Mikko Rantanen and Cale Makar.

Artturi Lehkonen has five points, but four of them came in the first two games of the season. He has just one assist in the last six games.

J.T. Compher has just one assist in eight games.

Evan Rodrigues has just two goals in eight games, but also the game-winning shootout goal and was stopped on a breakaway in the third period tonight. His production may not be there, but he’s been one of the more dangerous players recently. He simply has struggled to finish, which was the story with him coming into Colorado despite his career-high last year.

Nobody, however, has better embodied these struggles than Alex Newhook. We talked a lot in the preseason about him getting a look at the second-line center job and while he’s technically listed there on the roster sometimes, his minutes are more in line with a third-line player.

With zero points in eight games, the games where Newhook got robbed and had several close calls feel hollow and without much meaning in a results-based business. Of course, Nichushkin’s injury comes at a time when the Avs are already down Gabe Landeskog for the next few months and Nichushkin has been Colorado’s leading scorer.

With an entire line already imported from the AHL and waiver wire, the Avs even moved defenseman Jacob MacDonald back up to forward for tonight’s game, then only played him 3:21. Martin Kaut, Mikhail Maltsev, and Dryden Hunt maxed out at Hunt’s 7:46 tonight.

The usage was especially interesting given tonight was the front end of another back-to-back. MacKinnon, Rantanen, Lehkonen, Rodrigues, and Compher all surpassed the 20-minute mark with the first three all pushing 25 minutes.

With five forwards over 20 minutes and four under eight minutes, it was obvious Colorado’s coaching staff didn’t have any trust in the depth to get anything going despite the on-ice results.

On a night his top line was getting beaten up, head coach Jared Bednar didn’t seem to have much in the way of a solution other than to just keep hammering away with his top guns and hope they eventually broke through.

They never did, and the Hughes goal would get the Devils to the finish line tonight for two points.

The Avs head to Long Island tomorrow to take on the New York Islanders, who will be on the second leg of a back-to-back of their own after beating the Carolina Hurricanes in Raleigh tonight.