Short-handed Avs gut out victory thanks to Jost, Bernier

DENVER – The Colorado Avalanche refused to shoot most of the night, played in its own end most of the night and, frankly, was outplayed much of the night. But the Avs won anyway, 3-1 over the San Jose Sharks at the Pepsi Center.

Tyson Jost and Jonathan Bernier were the main heroes for the Avs, who have to head right back on the road again after this one-game homestand. J.T. Compher, whose empty-net goal finally ended it, was another hero. The Avs have now won a team-record nine straight games at home. Too bad their next game is Thursday in St. Louis, then a two-game odyssey to Carolina and Buffalo.

“It wasn’t pretty at times, but these are important points, and we wanted to keep it going at home,” a winded and sweaty Avs captain Gabe Landeskog said. “Guys stepped up. I mean, Josty and Compher and Yak, they were real good tonight, obviously, and Bernie was huge too, obviously.”

The first period? As bad as you might have expected from an Avs team missing Nathan MacKinnon and Mikko Rantanen, and coming off a long road trip. The shots were 14-3 Sharks. The scoreboard, though? Zero-zero. Thanks to one man, and one man only: Bernier. He finished with 38 saves, including all 13 he saw in the third period.

Is this as confident as Bernier has ever felt in his career?

“To be honest, I’ve had some good years (but) I think it got magnified a little bit in Toronto. My first year, I played really well, but unfortunately, I got hurt twice. You know, you’re not skating in the summer, it’s kind of tough to come to camp feeling confident. I can’t blame it on that, but I think I gained some experience and mentally I’m a lot stronger from all those things that happened to me in Toronto.”

Bernier was just outstanding in his return to the net, after ceding the starting job to Semyon Varlamov for one game. The Avs had the puck on their sticks a fair amount, but chose to overpass instead of shoot. Obviously, Jared Bednar expressed clearly enough in his intermission speech, the need to change that moving forward.

The Avs came out shooting more than Kobe Bryant, and in the process they were actually rewarded for it. Tyson Jost was the main man for the Avs in the period, scoring his fourth goal of the season and assisting on another, by Gabriel Bourque.

Bourque’s goal, at 2:31 of the second, was primarily set up by Compher, however, a nice give-and-go that fooled Martin Jones into a prone position. At 4:45, Jost took a lead pass from Nail Yakupov and beat Jones with a shot up high.

“We were looking for the perfect shot too much, instead of firing from all angles,” Landeskog said. “We started doing that in the second, and all of a sudden, we started getting pucks back and getting some momentum off of it.”

Actually, the Avs only got seven official shots in the second period, but it felt like more. Compared to the first, though, it was still a veritable shooting gallery.

The Avs had chances to up the lead even more, but got a little pass-happy again. San Jose finally got on the board at 13:29, on a Joel Ward rebound putback that bounced off the camera inside the net.

The first seven minutes of the third period were frustrating probably for Avs fans who can’t stand it when they don’t shoot more. The Avs had a 3-on-1 break, with Jost getting a nice drop pass from Bourque. But instead of taking the shot, Jost made a high-degree-of-difficulty pass over to Erik Johnson, who was foiled on his shot. Jost should have taken the shot.

Colin Wilson almost scored to make it 3-1 midway through the third. Almost. But his shot was rescued at right at the goal line by Tomas Hertl’s stick. Wilson raised his hands to celebrate, but no. No goal.

The Avs got some nice defensive plays in the period, including a great, diving poke check by Johnson against the always-dangerous Brent Burns. And, Sam Girard, like he did last week in St. Louis, sacrificed his body to make a play near the goal.

Bernier, too, made some more excellent saves, including a couple rockets from Burns at the blue line.

“My reads are there, obviously, right now. Just read the play, and I think when I do that, the game seems a lot easier,” Bernier said.

OTHER NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS

• Rantanen was a late scratch with a lower-body injury. Bednar at one point said he’s “probable” for Thursday in St. Louis, but hedged that a bit, essentially saying “we’ll see tomorrow.”
• Patrik Nemeth probably didn’t have the greatest night on the analytics sheet, but he finished a plus-3 with an assist.
• After being mocked much of the year because of his donut-hole goal-scoring number, Bourque now has three on the year.
• Colorado improved to 25-4-2 when scoring first, tied for the second-most wins in the league (Nashville, 26) when notching the first goal of the game. The Avs have scored the first goal of the game in all nine games of this home winning streak and have not trailed at any point.
• The Avalanche finished 2-for-2 on the penalty kill and is now 79-for-86 (91.8%) on the PK on home ice this season, the best home kill in the league. Colorado has allowed just seven power-play goals in 27 home games and just three in the last 15 at Pepsi Center (42-for-45, 93.3%).
• Colorado has tallied 98 goals at home this season, the second most in the NHL (Pittsburgh, 100). The Avalanche’s 3.63 goals-per-game average on home ice in 2017- 18 is second to only the Winnipeg Jets (3.8).
• San Jose C Joe Pavelski
  On The Loss: “[It’s] a little frustrating just because it felt like we controlled the play. Then after 2-3 minutes it was 2-0, and we battled back and we still had the play. It never really felt that dangerous on their part but when we did have breakdowns, Jones (San Jose G Martin Jones) was pretty solid for us. We just have to find ways to score more than one, bottom line.”