Semyon Varlamov saves his best for his former club

Let’s be real. We all saw this one coming, right?

When the NHL schedule was released, we all could look at the Avalanche traveling to New York to take on the Islanders and Semyon Varlamov and expect the curse of the ex-Avs to kick in.

Colorado has handled a few of their former players this year but skaters can be denied. Goaltenders have the fate of your entire game in their pads and we saw that play out tonight as the Avs were shutout by Varlamov and his new team in a 1-0 loss.

The game lacked basically any semblance of intensity through the first 40 minutes and the two teams entered the third period in a tie at 0-0.

It took a stroke of bad luck for the Avs, however, as Nikita Zadorov finally got his second goal of the year as beat Varly on a shot he never saw thanks to a perfect J.T. Compher screen.

Of course, I already spoiled the Avs were shutout so you know already the Zadorov goal was called back on an offside replay review. The initial looks at the replay looked pretty inconclusive but in time there were better looks that showed it was ultimately the right call.

That proved costly as Colorado failed to beat Varlamov the rest of the night.

The only real goal of the game came when Islanders captain Anders Lee beat Pavel Francouz on the glove side 6:54 into the third period and put the Isles into cruise control mode as they wrapped their defensive system around the Avs and squeezed.

In a game where neither team seemed to have full legs and the ice wasn’t very good, it looked like everyone was crawling through mud.

In the final minutes, Colorado managed to create some real pressure but Varlamov came up huge with stops on MacKinnon and Landeskog.

That was enough on a night of the ugliest hockey you’ll see all year.

GAME TAKEAWAYS

• This is easily the toughest game to really try to break down and dig into. There just wasn’t a lot that happened in this one. Colorado’s defense played pretty well and kept the Isles from an abundance of scoring chances and the only goal scored was one Francouz probably should have had. The offense generated some nice scoring chances but Varlamov was just better.
• This won’t help Colorado’s growing resume of struggling against defense-first, low-event teams. Of course, those teams very rarely play high-scoring affairs and get into run and gun games. Just because the Avs want to play fast and fly through the neutral zone with the puck doesn’t mean opposing teams are just going to let them. We’ve seen them struggle with St. Louis, Arizona, Dallas, and now the Islanders. It’s easy to focus on that despite more teams struggling with the Avs than the Avs struggle with but when you’re building a narrative around how a team is going to fail, that’s not really the point.
• Everything in this regular season should be about building towards the postseason and while the Avs are still on pace for over 100 points, playoff success is about matchups as much as anything else. And there are just too many landmines for the Avs to have to dance through right now to feel comfortable. They need to find ways to succeed in these tighter checking games where they aren’t scoring goals in bunches. Figuring out how to grind out goals and win games 2-1 has to be the next step in their evolution as a team. We know they can outscore teams and we know they’re comfortable when both teams are playing a more wide-open style. But do they have any confidence in these kinds of low-scoring affairs?
• It’s always easy to point to the stars and wonder where they were but I thought MacKinnon dominated like he normally does…the points just didn’t come. Goalies are allowed to make saves, after all. Varlamov just happened to make all of them.
• A shorter piece from me tonight but I think that’s appropriate given the game. The real crux of tonight was Varlamov came up bigger than any Av and just one lapse from Francouz was enough to sink them. That won’t be the case the vast majority of nights but it was tonight and sometimes that’s life.
• Avs take on the Rangers tomorrow at Madison Square Garden. The Rangers were, as you might have guessed, idle tonight.