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The Weekly 5-on-5: Avs focus on playoffs, NHL heads back outdoors

Jesse Montano Avatar
Jesse Montano
March 14, 2022
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It was another busy week in the NHL, and for he Colorado Avalanche specifically. Let;s get right into it.

1. Heritage Classic

I know a lot of folks have really started to write off the outdoor games, as they have lost their sense of unique-ness as we eclipsed 35 total games played with no roof, but I still think they are incredibly fun to watch, and always make for some awesome sights and sounds.

This was a classic matchup between the Buffalo Sabres and Toronto Maple Leafs, and I thought both teams looked real sharp in their special edition threads. Buffalo played in the NHL’s first Winter Classic back in 2008, so it was cool to see them back out there, and I really like the sneaky rivalry matchup between Toronto and Buffalo. These two cities are much closer to each other than most people realize, so there is a bit of a “turf war” between these two fan bases.

The game was played at Tim Horton’s Field in Hamilton, Ontario, which houses roughly 23,000 fans and is home to the CFL’s Hamilton Tiger-Cats. When I first saw how much smaller of a venue it was relative to most stadiums we see picked for these types of events, I was a bit skeptical and had the thought of… “why do it somewhere that only sits 1,000 more people than the NHL’s biggest arena?”, but after receiving a photo from a good friend who was in attendance, I totally understood.

The one gripe most folks have with the outdoor games is that they are primarily made-for-TV, and aren’t all that great to be in attendance for given how far you are from the playing surface. Not the case here. The sight-lines looked fantastic, and it seemed just perfect for this type of game.

Buffalo helped continue the trend we’ve seen recently of top teams getting spanked by clubs who are basically trying to see how low they can finish in the standings to give themselves better lottery odds.

I’d definitely say this event was a success for the league. 

2. Toronto Goaltending

Alright, let’s talk about those guys who just lost the Heritage Classic. Pretty much everyone has agreed since the preseason, the Maple Leafs are legit contenders. The one thing that I personally saw as their potential Achilles’ heel was going to be their goaltending.

Not that it was a sure-fire weakness, but mostly that you just didn’t know what it was going to look like.

Jack Campbell was an awesome feel-good start last season, finally living up to his pre-draft hype after 11 years and seizing the net from then-starter Fredrik Andersen, but you always are a little on edge when a goalie suddenly starts to defy what he has been for his entire career. You always question how sustainable it is.

Campbell started this season right where he left off, and looked stellar, even generating some (quite a bit, actually) early-season Vezina buzz.

However, since the calendar flipped to 2022, and even for a little while before, neither of Toronto’s netminders have been able to string together any amount of solid play. As a result, the Leafs have slipped a bit in the standings, nowhere near out of playoff contention but still, and now must answer a question that I’m not sure they thought they were going to have to deal with this season. The question of course is, “do we have the goaltending to win a seven-game series?” If you ask me, right now the answer is no. 

This has always been a team that has tried to outscore a lot of their problems, which is pretty easy to do when you have as many offensive weapons as Toronto does, but it’s typically not a great recipe for success come playoff time. I think Leaf fans would agree.

So with a week to go until the deadline, what is Leafs GM Kyle Dubas going to do? OH! I should add, that it was announced this week that Campbell will be on the shelf with an injury for multiple weeks, just to complicate things and make it even harder to get a pulse on what your situation is.

Keep an eye on Marc-Andre Fleury, and Semyon Varlamov.

3. Jack Eichel’s return

We talked about this game a bit on one of our DNVR Avalanche pregame shows this week, and I even tweeted about wanting to take the ultimate “everybody loses” parlay for this one. 

It was Jack Eichel’s first game against the Buffalo Sabres since leaving on what can only be described as pretty ugly terms. You knew there was going to be some hostility from the home crowd, Eichel had requested a trade out of Buffalo well before any of the injury debate cropped up, and then everything was made that much more contentious by the very public disagreement between player and organization.

For the record, I think they should’ve just let him have the surgery he wanted and avoided all the mess, but what do I know I just work here.

Anyway, his reception was probably uglier than even most people thought, as it seemed mostly hostile, with only a few supporters sprinkled in here and there. It was a nightmare scenario for Eichel, constant boos any time he touched the puck, more boos than cheers during his tribute video, and to top it all off, he had the puck knocked off his stick by Alex Tuch (one of the main pieces that went back to Buffalo in the deal) who would go the other way to pot the empty netter and seal a Sabres win.

Eichel said all the right things leading up to the game, even did a couple of in-depth interviews on it and sounded like a total pro. Then he lost and just couldn’t help himself. 

Woof, don’t love that one honestly. I know emotions are high, it’s immediately following a loss, your team is in an uncountable spiral, and you just got booed for literally three hours, but this just made him look worse. It’s not gonna hurt any Sabres fans’ feelings, and they get to laugh all the way home.

They say revenge is a dish best served cold, enjoy your cold revenge dish, Jack.

4. Joe Pavelski re-signs in Dallas

Not a ton to say here, other than I’m genuinely surprised. Earlier in the season, Pavelski looked like a sure-fire rental to be moved at the deadline. He *was* on an expiring contract, nearing the end of his career, and Dallas appears to be moving in the wrong direction.

Well, not only has Dallas decided to keep him for a playoff push this year, they have signed him to a one-year contract extension worth $5.5M. It’s an interesting move for him, given that he doesn’t have a Stanley Cup on his resumé. You’d think he’d want to shop his services around in the summer, but I guess not.

It makes sense for Dallas, keep him this year in case you can sneak into the postseason, and at worst, you’ve got a valuable trade piece again for next year.

5. Beautiful SHL goal

I have almost nothing to add to this other than, I love this goal so much. So smooth, incredible finish. Michael Lundqvist of Färjestad BK pulls off this ridiculous toe drag before stuffing a back-hander high on the glove side.

16 year old me would watch this on repeat for 5 hours. I’m grown up now, so I’ll just do like 90 minutes or something.

Honorable mention:

What on earth was Alex Nedeljkovic thinking?

1. Gabe Landeskog to have knee surgery

Woo boy, this one is a doozy. A lot of mixed reactions to the team announcing this. At face value, you’re now without your captain and leading goal scorer for what will almost assuredly be for the balance of the regular season as Gabe Landeskog will have knee surgery to fix what the team described as a lingering injury that Landy has been dealing with all season.

That’s not good.

Here’s where it gets interesting. Gabe Landeskog will be put on LTIR at some point this week, and that means his cap hit is about to come (temporarily) off the books for Colorado. And wouldn’t ya know it… the trade deadline is just a week away and cap flexibility is at an all-time premium. 

That can definitely be looked at as a positive.

I was pretty hard on the Vegas Golden Knights for using the LTIR loophole to make Jack Eichel’s contract work, so I’m gonna give my honest opinion here.

I don’t think this one feels as greasy as the Vegas one did, the Knights made a move they clearly couldn’t afford and then made a couple of very obvious cap-friendly moves about 48 hours before they knew they would need it, but that doesn’t mean I don’t see what the Avs are like doing here.

Gabe Landeskog is 100% hurt, I mean he’s literally having surgery, just like Mark Stone is absolutely hurt, and not unlike how Tampa Bay’s Nikita Kucherov was legitimately hurt when the defending champs pulled the same LTIR move last year (again, he had surgery), but make no mistake, the teams are being very deliberate in how they handle things.

I say this without knowing for sure, but I can absolutely assume that the timing of this is very intentional. I’m sure this is something that has been bothering Gabe for a little bit now, it was probably even discussed internally multiple times this year, so why now? Why not take care of this when the problem arose?

If I were a betting man, which you’re damn right I am, I would probably say that this was something they knew would be a relatively quick recovery (assuming everything goes to plan), and it’s probably a situation where playing on it wasn’t going to make it worse, even if it was a bit uncomfortable. So that means they had enough flexibility to wait, and get the survey at a time that would benefit the teams’ needs.

I also wouldn’t look past the fact that it’s likely this surgery could’ve waited until the summer, had the team not been sitting in a very comfortable position standings-wise.

So while I don’t for a second think the Avs, or any of the teams that have taken advantage of this loophole, are making up an injury, I do think they’re paying attention to the calendar, consulting with doctors (and the player) to make a decision that benefits everyone involved.

2. Sam Girard out four weeks

Sammy G is set to miss the next four weeks with a lower-body injury. I have to imagine this is related to the injury he was constantly nursing before the Christmas pause, as there was nothing that stood out about the last game that he played in (same for Landeskog). I noticed at practice for weeks that Girard was stretching out a lot more than normal in between drills, and he was given quite a few extra days off.

Combine that with the dip in play we’ve seen this year, and it makes perfect sense to assume that Girard has been battling this for a while.

Four weeks puts him back with about 10 days – two weeks to go in the season, which the team may want to make sure he has enough runway to ramp back up for the playoffs, but if you’re asking me… I say you’re in for a penny, in for a pound. Just LTIR him with Landy and go truly all in at the deadline.

3. Pavel Francouz gets 2-year extension

Hey! Good news, the Avs have a goalie signed for next year.

Pavel Francouz inked a brand new two-year deal with an AAV (average annual value) of $2M. This is a great move for everyone. Francouz likes it here, and the Avs I think really do believe in him. He spent a lot of his last two-year contract on injured reserve, so I’m sure both he and the organization are hoping to get a little more mileage out of this one.

I’ve talked about Frankie a lot lately, I really like him as a goaltender, he’s very mechanically sound. Not a lot of extra movement. 

I’ve been saying for a few weeks now on the DNVR Avalanche Podcast that I could see the Avs getting a small money deal done with him, and really kind of using him as a fall-back depending on what happens with the goalie market this summer. There’s a fair bit that rests on what the team does in the playoffs as well, but either way, if they feel they are priced out of Kuemper, and don’t want to pay high acquisition costs to bring in an established #1, I could legitimately see them giving Francouz at least a look to see if he can handle the starting goaltender duties, or at the very least a 1a/1b situation.

Lots of hockey left this year, so we’ll kick that conversation down the road a bit.

Darcy Kuemper bounces back

If I have to answer one more person asking me what the Avs are going to do in net… well, truthfully I’ll probably just answer them, but on the inside, I’ll be ever so slightly annoyed.

Colorado paid a heavy price to bring in Darcy Kuemper this past offseason after Philipp Grubauer elected to take his talents to the North West and sign with the Seattle Kraken, giving up a first-round pick and defensive stud Conor Timmins. So immediately the fan base had its guard up.

And the early season ups and downs didn’t help. Though, anybody who was actually watching those games saw that there was plenty of good there to build on.

Since December, Darcy Kuemper has been among the NHL’s very top goaltenders, working his way into that second tier of Vezina contenders, goalies who are having great seasons, but aren’t matching what a guy like Igor Shesterkin from New York has done.

For three solid months, Kuempers play had put to bed any rumors that the Avs may be shopping around for a goalie. 

Then he got pulled after giving up three goals against Calgary just a week ago, and all of those rumors and conversations picked up right where they left off.

For several reasons, it doesn’t make much sense for the Avalanche to pursue the like of Marc-Andre Fleury in my opinion, but after a pair of below-average starts this past week, Kuemper put on two back-to-back world-class performances. 

He was outstanding against Carolina on the road, being the biggest reason the Avs weren’t run out of the building early on, then capping that off with a 46-save shutout performance against the Calgary Flames. Two huge games against two very good opponents, and Kuemps was lights out in both.

It’s a long season, it’s never going to be perfect, but you need to see that players have the ability to rise to the occasion when needed, I think Kuemper has shown that several times this year, and gave folks a good reminder this past week.

5. Not looking at the standings

I asked Jared Bednar how concerned his team was about winning the President’s Trophy, or just the standings in general, versus how focused they are on being at their best come playoff time. I thought he had a great answer, so I’ll end this week’s 5-on-5 with his full quote. Enjoy.

“That [playoffs] is the main focus, yup. I mean sure we like to be first overall. I just think it’s, you try to win every night. That’s what you do, you know what I mean? So, if you finish first overall, it’s like ‘great job guys’, it doesn’t mean anything. We don’t know where everyone is going to slot, we haven’t talked about preferred matchups, none of that. We’re playing to win. We’re playing to win now, and we’ll play to win in the playoffs. So, I’ll be honest with you, because we’ve been so good and where we’ve sat, I haven’t even looked at the standings all year. I  haven’t felt a need. I circle games against other teams… Calgary, Carolina, Tampa, you know the teams that we know are having great seasons that you’re gonna have to face, but I also do it against Minnesota is a dangerous team, Vegas, all these teams. You’re not getting out of our side without playing three really tough series, regardless of who it is.”

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