Why the Avalanche won again - and why they'll win again with more regularity now

TORONTO – I’ve covered a lot of Avalanche teams, but I haven’t seen one that wanted to win a January regular-season game quite as much as the one that played Monday night here in the Big Smoke. The final from Scotiabank Arena: Avalanche 6, Toronto Maple Leafs 3.

Before the game, as I was walking through the corridor by the Leafs dressing room, I witnessed Toronto coach Mike Babcock sound like Mel Gibson in “Braveheart”, bellowing some kind of call to arms to whoever was listening. Walking past that same Toronto room after the game?

Crickets.

Inside the Avalanche room after the game: Jubilation. Hoots and hollers that could be heard from a hundred feet away.

Victory, at last, belonged to the Colorado Avalanche.

“We don’t fear any team,” Avs defenseman Mark Barberio told BSN Denver. “We know if we bring our legs and our speed, we can skate and play with anybody. This has been in the works. This has been coming. There’s been a few games in a row now where I think we deserved a better fate. I think it just all came together tonight. We just weren’t going to take no for an answer.”

Carl Soderberg certainly wasn’t going to take no for an answer. Big Ole Carl scored his first career hat trick, in his first game as the new second-line center, in hoisting the Avs on his back and carrying them to The Promised Ice.

As Avs radio man Conor McGahey says, “Carl, good to see you.” (That’s a line from the movie “Billy Madison”).

Carl did it all, whether it was outworking Jake Gardiner on a loose puck and putting it home for a short-handed goal that made it 3-2 Avs with 5:31 left in the period, to putting home a laser of a one-timer past Frederik Andersen with 8:15 left in the game, breaking a 3-3 tie.

Good to see you, indeed, Carl.

“We think we played pretty good in Winnipeg and Calgary. They were close games and we could have come out with two points, but I think tonight we just scored the big goals,” said Soderberg, who now has 15 goals on the season – one short of his total from all of last season.

Soderberg’s short-hander woke up the entire team, changing the game for good. The Avs started well, but couldn’t put anything past Andersen in the first, then allowed two bad goals to start the second. It was “Here we go again” time. But then Gabe Landeskog tipped a Tyson Barrie shot home, Mikko Rantanen picked the pocket of Nazem Kadri to make it 2-2  and then Big Ole Carl just outworked the laconic Gardiner (who was booed mercilessly after that) and put a shot past a stunned Andersen, and the comeback was on.

Mitch Marner scored to tie it back up at six minutes of the third, but Soderberg converted a great steal and feed from linemate J.T. Compher for the game-winner. Matt Calvert banked home an empty-netter to make it 5-3, and Soderberg added another for the hat trick.

Avs coach Jared Bednar said he moved Soderberg up in the line chart to “try and get a spark.”

Mission accomplished, at least for one night.

The Avs also got a big boost from the return of Nikita Zadorov. Despite taking two minor penalties, Big Z was credited with seven hits in the game, and he had four shots on net. His size and strength just seemed to add a little of that swagger to an Avs lineup that just hasn’t had it without him.

“I felt great. I felt, conditioning-wise, it was pretty good,” Zadorov told BSN Denver. “It was exciting to come back. It was three weeks, four weeks, with no hockey. I had good emotions to come and play today.”

Now it’s on to Ottawa to finish this five-game trip, and you can bet the Avs will want that one badly too. Of course, a win over the Senators means they probably get that much better of a draft pick in the first round this summer. But this Avs team doesn’t want to think about next year just yet.

I saw genuine fervor around these guys again tonight. They really do want to win. For a few games, I wasn’t sure I saw the passion necessary. I saw it tonight.

On to Ottawa.