Val Nichushkin’s magic and 3 other takeaways from the Avalanche’s win over Columbus

With two days off for the first time since the regular season began, the Colorado Avalanche looked like a well-rested team that was eager to finish off their two-game road trip with an emphatic win and…that’s exactly what happened with a breezy 4-1 win over the Columbus Blue Jackets.

The pace of the first period was arguably the best we’ve seen in an Avs game so far this year (non-Dallas edition) and it was curious to see the Dean Evason-coached Blue Jackets being so willing to try to skate with the Avalanche because, you know, historically speaking, that has been a really bad idea.

Columbus got away with it for a bit and had a 1-0 lead before the Avs kicked their game into full gear and scored three consecutive goals to take a 3-1 lead going into the third period. Here’s what that full-tilting of the ice looks like in cool graph form:

That is, to be frank, an ass kicking.

Val Nichushkin led the way with two goals and Brock Nelson also had one to give the second line the breakthrough performance it had been looking for. Cale Makar added a goal and an assist. Scott Wedgewood‘s mastery of the NHL continued as he allowed just one goal again on 23 shots on goal.

The real story for me here is who didn’t score, so let’s start there.

“Depth” drives the bus for the Avs

To start this year, Nathan MacKinnon and Martin Necas had done a lot of the heavy lifting offensively as they each were leading the league with eight points after four games. It was cool, but it also felt very familiar in that if the first line wasn’t scoring, offense wasn’t happening.

That wasn’t really true as they were getting a goal contribution from a different line and/or the defense on top of what MacKinnon’s line was producing, but it was fair to be frustrated that the Brock Nelson-centered second line had been a near total non-factor offensively. Given how much money is tied up in that line, the Avs aren’t going to succeed without them making some significant contributions.

Ah, just in time!

After the MacKinnon line got the Avs on the board first with a goal from Makar (via assists from Necas and Artturi Lehkonen), the Avalanche’s second line went to work and scored the final three goals of the night.

Nelson got a deflection goal from a shot-pass by Brent Burns, the perfect execution of what that combination should be doing well as Burns is constantly looking to shoot for a stick and Nelson is a large human who does his best work in front of the net. Nichushkin followed with a back-breaking 3-1 goal with just under four seconds remaining in the second period on a deflection from a Sam Malinski wrister from the point.

It should be noted that Victor Olofsson had been playing so well that he had taken a shifts at the end of the first and second period as the Avs were trying to steal a little offense and it worked to perfection with Nichushkin’s first goal.

The final goal was an empty-net goal that put Gabe Landeskog on the board as he made an excellent breakout pass up the wall to spring Nichushkin in alone against the empty net for the easy put-away.

In this one, the script was flipped from previous games where other lines generated one goal and the MacKinnon line produced multiple. Tonight, MacKinnon’s line produced one and the second line scored three (with heavy help from the defense).

About that defense…

The high-scoring Avalanche defense is a nightmare

The second line has been in the spotlight quite a bit over the last two games because patience is always going to wear thin while waiting for a line to produce, you know, like a high-end second line should produce. That’s fair.

What I wanted to dig into is that the Avalanche defense, long one of the highest-scoring in the NHL, is back to its tricks again. Of course, when you have Cale Makar to pot points regularly, the defense is going to be high in the ranks in production. That’s obviously a big part of it, but Makar can’t do it on his own. Tonight was a great example of how this lineup can be dangerous up and down because it wasn’t just Makar from the back end.

Burns, Malinski, and Josh Manson got in on the act with assists and Devon Toews would have had a first-period goal had it not been for a spectacular save by Elvis Merzlikins sliding across his crease and getting his blocker on the offering.

The Avalanche offense takes on a nearly-unstoppable dimension when the defensemen are activating and creating even more problems for the opposing team and tonight was a perfect encapsulation of that. Avs defensemen had 11 shots on goal and everyone but Ilya Solovyov had at least one (and Solovyov had three shots miss the net so it wasn’t a lack of trying on his part).

Defending a team with MacKinnon on it is always going to be tough sledding, but teams previously have been able to “live” with what he does to them because the other lines couldn’t generate much offense on their own. This year has been a similar approach, but I think some of that is overblown simply because MacKinnon’s line plays so many minutes and generates so much offense that it looks like everyone else is slacking.

But also…yeah? Everyone else is slacking if you compare it to literally everyone else over the last eight seasons as he’s outscored everyone except Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl, so, yeah, you’re talking about a guy whose elite production is naturally going to dwarf that of those around him.

Anyway, about that Avalanche defense, it scores a lot and it produced five more points tonight and was part of a dominant offensive onslaught.

Scott Wedgewood is actually awesome?

On the other end of the blitzkrieg the Avs laid on Columbus was Wedgewood, who was steady and excellent once again. He gave up the game’s first goal on a broken coverage by the skaters in front of him and then locked it down from there. Sort of. He actually allowed two other goals, but both goals were disallowed because the first was batted in by a hand (maybe the chest, but it was hard to tell?) and the second was pulled off the board because it was definitely the result of a hand pass.

Anyway, those goals didn’t count because Columbus scored them by being neener neener cheaters and those don’t count. Wedgwood finished with 22 saves on 23 shots on goal, but a late Blue Jackets push could have made things interesting and Wedgewood answered the bell every time.

He finished with just one goal allowed but stopped all five high-danger shots that got to him. He didn’t give anything easy, which has been a major key for him this year. He has made opposing teams work to beat him and the Avalanche defense has been suffocating from there, especially in this one. This was a dominant all-around effort by the Avs and they made Wedgewood’s life easier than some of the other games, but plenty of credit goes to the goaltender who has allowed only one goal one four of his five starts.

If you’re looking for the reasons the Avs are 4-0-1, Wedgewood is high on that list.

That Avalanche third pairing was magical

I’ll write about this more tomorrow in Studs & Duds, but what in the world got into the Ilya Solovyov-Sam Malinski third pairing tonight? The numbers tonight are so shockingly tilted that I’m excited to go rewatch the game tomorrow and see what was happening because my goodness. Here’s what they did in 10:16 of 5v5 time together:

• Shot attempts: 22-2
• Shots on goal: 10-1
• Scoring chances: 13-0
• High-danger chances: 6-0

I’m sorry, what? With that pairing on the ice with the third line, shot attempts were, at worst, 17-0. Even an NHL team playing against an AHL team isn’t going to be able to produce many, if any at all, stretches like that. Those are video game numbers!