Sam Girard shook the noise and spearheaded another Avalanche blowout

Winning changes some things, doesn’t it?

Earlier in the week, Nathan MacKinnon was lost for three weeks (ish) and the Avs were coming off back-to-back losses to the Columbus Blue Jackets. They were hurting physically and emotionally and in danger of watching things spiral out of control on them.

Then the Avs blew out the Vancouver Canucks in a 7-1 shelling that was never competitive and it gave the Avs new life. Fun was back on the menu.

With the San Jose Sharks in town tonight and getting seven regulars back in the lineup, the Avs ordered a second helping of that fun…but it came with a little delay.

Things didn’t start out that great for the Avs as the Sharks jumped out to a 1-0 lead while outshooting Colorado 8-0. That’s the kind of step back you always are afraid of after a dominant, blowout win. Complacency is always the concern.

After that hot start, however, the Avs outscored the Sharks 6-1 and outshot them 31-22 along the way to leave no doubt in a two-game homestand that reminded the hockey world this Avalanche team can still play a little.

Outscoring the opposition 13-3 after a frustrating, sluggish, disappointing 4-5-1 start is certainly a good way to get back on the right track.

“It’s only two games,” says the cynic, but that’s two more games than they had four days ago when it felt like the sky was falling.

Similar to seven different players scoring goals against Vancouver, the Avs got goals from six different players tonight. It was a full-bodied win yet again, one full of season-firsts for several players tonight. Among them:

• First goals of the season for Alex Newhook and Sam Girard
• First assists of the season for Jack Johnson, Jayson Megna and Darren Helm
• First point of the season for Megna

The Avs got goals at even strength, on the power play, short-handed, and into an empty net to give them goals at four different strengths. That’s a whole lot of good news.

The bad news came in the form of, you guessed it, another injury. After losing Bowen Byram to a concussion against the Canucks, J.T. Compher took a hard hit along the wall late in the first period to draw an interference penalty but did not return to the game as the team said he was out with an upper-body injury.

After losing Compher from their top line, Logan O’Connor filled in as Gabe Landeskog and Mikko Rantanen each appeared to take a shift or two centering that line.

O’Connor scored a short-handed goal off a nifty pass from Helm, a reverse of the scoreline from the Canucks game when those two also combined for another shorty.

The real star of the game though was Sam Girard, who had two assists against Vancouver and looked like the “real” Girard we’ve become accustomed to seeing the last several years.

Everyone knew Girard’s early-season struggles weren’t going to continue forever; he has just been too good of a player for too long for that level of play to become his new normal.

That said, throwing up a four-point night (1g, 3a) after the two-point effort against the Canucks is, like the team he’s on, a pretty good way to get right after a slow start.

This is where I throw a small caveat and say there’s a decent chance one of Girard’s assists gets taken away in the middle of the night because the fifth Colorado goal (where Girard had the secondary assist) looked like it might have gone in off Mikko Rantanen’s body but even if that does happen, it doesn’t really change the overall point.

Girard was great once again and the Avalanche defense has looked transformed with the Devon Toews-Cale Makar pairing back intact.

What’s fascinating is the Toews-Makar pairing has produced poor underlying numbers but both games have turned into blowouts where score effects are a very real factor to consider.

Either way you want to paint it, there’s no doubt that pairing put back together has put Girard back into position to feast on the lesser competition he routinely took advantage of last year. When getting into just how good Girard really is, performances like tonight help shade that conversation.

When put against other team’s best players, Girard has struggled at times. When consistently played like a “second-pairing defenseman”, Girard has eaten greedy and played great. Great in that role is a good place to be, especially with a legitimately great top pairing in place and a talented star like Byram finding his way as well.

The Sharks actually ended up with pretty good shot metrics in tonight’s game. They had more shots on goal and high-danger chances at 5v5 than the Avs, which led them to an expected goals advantage at even strength.

It’s too bad for San Jose then that the entire game wasn’t played at 5v5 because Colorado’s special teams tore up the Sharks. Getting two goals from those units is a huge leap forward for the Avalanche as both units were badly struggling coming into this week.

Even though the Colorado power play only scored once in five tries, the Avs generated 16 shot attempts and 10 scoring chances with the man advantage. This is a classic “great process” game for that unit and something for them to build from.

That’s the true theme of this week for the Avs, to be honest. It’s all something to build from. There is no singular dominant star right now, but a committee of high-end players getting the job done together. If Colorado’s fifth goal does indeed go to Rantanen, Colorado’s entire top six forwards will have registered points tonight, led by Nazem Kadri’s three.

It’s the waves of aggression that really made the difference tonight for the Avalanche as they kept attacking, kept swarming, even when the game seemed decided.

When the Sharks made it 4-2 with just over 10 minutes to play in the third period, instead of falling back into the bad habits we saw earlier this year when the team was trying to protect a lead, the Avs attacked, attacked, attacked.

That’s been their identity in the past and that was certainly what drove their success tonight.

It was a listless start to the season, one I wrote several times was lacking specifically in identity. As most of the lineup got back into place, however, things have seemed to click for the Avalanche.

Granted, it helps to play two weaker opponents in a row and each with serious issues to deal with (Vancouver looks like a team on the verge of a coaching change and the Sharks got seven guys back all at once who haven’t played in nearly two weeks), but this is how you expect a team of Colorado’s perceived caliber to treat opponents licking their wounds.

It’s something to build on as they head into another three-day break before hitting the road next week.

TAKEAWAYS

• Compher was said to have “pulled something” and Jared Bednar was not particularly optimistic in his postgame presser, adding that there was no timeline for Compher at the moment and leaving open the possibility of it being a long-term injury.
• If Compher is out of any games, this was a perfect two-game audition for Alex Newhook to state his case. It was telling that even when Compher went out tonight, Bednar was reluctant to break up the Kadri line because it was working so well together. The natural solution here doesn’t feel like sliding Landeskog to center, even though he has for years moonlighted as a center defensively to help Nathan MacKinnon out, but rather slotting Newhook in. Newhook scored a big goal tonight after producing an assist against the Canucks and is playing with the kind of vigor and skill we expected to see from him at the beginning of the season. The confidence boost from his 10-game AHL stint seems to have really done wonders for him. The argument against moving Newhook up is, of course, that he’s just finding his legs in the NHL and letting him continue to succeed in more of a third-line role might be better for his long-term success versus throwing him to the wolves and getting actively game-planned against by opposing coaches if he’s on the top line. It’s a tough spot for Bednar.
• Logan O’Connor continues to be Colorado’s quiet MVP this year. He’s doing everything and making a difference everywhere. His added snarl has been fun, too, as we saw Andrew Cogliano jump LOC from behind in two different scrums tonight. LOC has always been a pesky type of player and opposing players really seem to respond to his personality. He’s just what the Avs have needed but showing a skill level he never really has before.
• Erik Johnson is so steady in his current role with the Avalanche. I genuinely enjoy watching him more than I did in his prime when he was maybe just a touch over his head as the team’s best defenseman but in this current role he is a healthy mixture of everything the Avalanche want. He brings good size, decent physicality and the kind of skating and puck-moving that fit them really well. He’s EJ, but with a job description that doesn’t involve a crippling downside if he has a bad night.
• After the Avs claimed Nicolas Aube-Kubel today, I was really curious how Kiefer Sherwood would play tonight. Sherwood’s job is the one most likely to go to NAK and he has to know he is on the cusp of being out of the lineup again. Compher’s injury probably doesn’t even change that match much because he was being played at center so that’s where the next call-up is likeliest to come from. Sherwood responded with the best shot metrics of the night on the Avalanche and finished with a team-high 75% expected goals for, so there’s that. If you look at the box score, however, he finished with zeroes across the board except for one hit and one takeaway in just over ten minutes of ice time. To the eye, it was another game where he didn’t accomplish a whole lot out there and wasn’t particularly dangerous himself in any situation. I don’t think it was enough, personally, but we’ll see how they want to handle the Compher injury situation.
• Darcy Kuemper…quietly putting together a real solid string of games.