Special teams sink Avalanche in eighth straight loss

When you’ve lost seven games in a row, there aren’t really any positives you can take into the eighth game that don’t sound hollow or meaningful. The Avalanche went out and had the kind of first period they really needed to have. Sure, there were some mistakes but asking a team to play mistake-free is asking a team not to be made up of humans. It’s just unrealistic.

The 1-1 tie they went into the first intermission with after having outplayed the visiting Toronto Maple Leafs should have been something to build on. Instead, the team on the seven-game losing streak used the first period as a springboard to do a bunch of predictably dumb stuff and find their way into a 4-1 hole before the halfway point of the second period.

As I talked to one scout after the game, he mentioned to me just how fragile the Avalanche obviously are. He’s 100% correct. How did this group, which was so resilient in the face of adversity last season, find their way back to being as prone to internal collapses as they are? How is this largely the same group that stared down the barrel of elimination in Nashville last year and found their way to two goals to steal the game and force the Predators to fly back to Denver to take care of business? What happened to the “guts all over the place” group?

Because that group is unequivocally dead and buried. For the life of me, I just can’t figure out what really happened to get us to this point. The goaltending was solid, the scoring from the top line was unsustainably outrageous but the secondary scoring was holding their own. Then you fast forward through a couple of months and suddenly everything has collapsed like a dying star.

Tonight’s game was just another in a frustrating season of moving goalposts as the Avalanche has gotten increasingly creative in finding their ways to lose games. Instead of worrying about the fiasco of overtime, they used undisciplined and lazy hockey to find their way to a runaway victory against a team they dispatched in Toronto just a month ago.

It’s just another brick in the wall of what looks more and more to be a lost season.

Takeaways from the game

• The game opened up with Colorado getting some quality looks but Kasperi Kapanen got a mini-breakaway almost immediately and while Semyon Varlamov made the save, it set the stage for an active period from Kapanen.
• Kapanen would get a second breakaway after Sam Girard decided to just give the puck away in the offensive zone despite having plenty of time and space to do something a little more productive. Kapanen converted on that breakaway to give Toronto its first lead of the game.
• The Ryan Graves Feel Good Story continued early on as his blast from the point tied the game in the first period. For a guy who was given up on by the Rangers and never given a real thought by people like me, he’s absolutely earned everything he’s gotten in the NHL. It makes you wonder who else the Avs might have in Loveland that is capable of playing above their AHL level of play because Graves certainly wasn’t dominating for the Eagles.
• There was a whole lot of bad money leading to the second Toronto goal. Nathan MacKinnon with two lazy plays trying to exit the zone that became turnovers. Then Tyson Barrie takes the penalty behind the night, Erik Johnson is caught flailing around on the ice in front of the goal on the PK and Varlamov couldn’t make the save (not that he stood much of a chance, to be honest). All told, that’s $23.7 million dollars of failed execution leading to that goal.
• That second goal was an unfortunately apt example of the team’s best players not being anywhere near good enough. All the frustrations about lower lineup decisions really shrink in relevance when you see the top guys fail that hard.
• The entire collapse of the PK is your primary culprit for the team’s undoing tonight. Given how bad this unit is, improved discipline is badly needed from this group. A lot of people like to put that on coaching but why does Jared Bednar need to tell J.T. Compher not to randomly attack a guy and get himself a four-minute double minor? Is that really something he has to say? What in the world was Compher thinking/doing right there??
• Varlamov got pulled for Philipp Grubauer but this is hardly a game you can put on the netminders. Both guys gave up goals in which they just didn’t stand any kind of chance.
• The Avalanche have been slowly creeping towards the deadline with the Tyson Barrie Conundrum staring them down but his play lately sure makes it seem like they might want to get into more of a hurry to find a good deal for him. The defensive play has started to significantly cost the Avs more than his offense is producing and that’s even with an almost offense-only deployment. While everything is magnified when losing takes this much of a hold, this is really becoming something of an eyesore for them.
• While I’ve said on a number of occasions that I don’t think the main problem is Jared Bednar, I do think we’re reaching the point where it becomes tough for his assistants to come back right now. While the PP percentage is still shiny and in the top ten, it’s been on a steady decline for a while now. At one point, it was in the range of 33% and while that wasn’t going to last all year, it’s now down in the low 20s and still dropping. Ray Bennett doesn’t seem to have any answers on that unit and, obviously, the Nolan Pratt-coached penalty kill is an utter disaster right now. Barring a major turnaround in success in the final couple of months of the season, these guys can’t be brought back.