AVS GAME ANALYSIS: MacKinnon and Makar Help Avs Survive Coyotes

World-class players defeat a Coyotes team hell-bent on ruining hockey's watchability.

This is going to be short and sweet. 

You all pay for quality Avs coverage (more from Dater than me) and I try to remember that when I write something. 

But this game doesn’t deserve much of an in-depth analysis when it can be boiled down to two things: Cale Makar and Nathan MacKinnon.

Those two guys factored in all three goals with one score and two helpers each as the Colorado Avalanche survived the Arizona Coyotes, 3-1, in the first of a home-and-home with their Central Division counterparts.

I say survive because that’s what it was. The Coyotes might be the best terrible team in the league. They have one really good player in Clayton Keller, who scored in the game. Then Arizona did what it did in the last meeting with the Avs: they sit back, clog the ice and drag the game down to a miserable pace.

And that works for them for long stretches. It’s their best bet to win games when their front office doesn’t want them to win games. You cannot say this team is tanking when they continue to be a tough out nearly every night.

But you can only clog the game for so long before world-class players like Makar and MacKinnon step up. Remember that line in Jurassic Park where Jeff Goldblum says something to the effect of, “Life, uh, finds a way.” Well for the Avs, it’s, “MacKinnon and Makar, uh, find a way.”