Avs Takeaways From A Lost Night In Tampa
Colorado gets smoked in Cup Finals rematch
I’ll keep this brief, because the less this game is talked about, the better.
But some observations on the state of the Avs tonight and in general:
The lack of scoring really is kind of the problem with this team overall. The Avs came into tonight 20th in NHL scoring, and then got shut out by Andrei Vasilevskiy and the Lightning.
Goals from lines 3 and 4 continue to be sparse. Logan O’Connor just can’t score anymore, J.T. Compher only has one point in the last six games, Andrew Cogliano and Matt Nieto just aren’t goal-scorers, etc. etc. Alex Newhook has 20 points in 50 games.
But the top guys were no good tonight either. Nathan MacKinnon was quiet, so was Mikko Rantanen.
And Valeri Nichushkin has looked a little off lately.
Of course, no Cale Makar (upper-body) didn’t help. He flew back to Denver, and is being further evaluated.
Artturi Lehkonen was absolutely invisible tonight too.
Evan Rodrigues took a puck to the face in the third period and left the game. Let’s hope that doesn’t turn into something more.
About LOC: If he’s never going to score again, he’s at least got to be on top of pucks and getting under guys’ skin and all that worker-bee stuff. Right now, he’s not doing that either. LOC had three Corsi events for tonight, eight against.
Alexandar Georgiev tonight? Not great.
Next game: Saturday against the Panthers. The only good news for the Avs tonight was Minnesota and Calgary also lost, so they didn’t slip in the standings. But the fact is: right now, the Avs are a bubble team for the playoffs, and this was Game No. 50 on the season tonight.
I was disappointed too with how easily the Avalanche give up their goals: Perry all by himself down low, Hagel easily beating other AVS to the puck for a tap in, etc. While at the other end, not enough effort to get to the net? Reckless with the puck in the offensive zone on PP. They squander their opportunities with just holding onto the puck during the PP. Again, to me, it's all mental with these guys? I don't like the direction they seem to be going in. I know it's 2 games but they have to correct it due to frittering away a lot of points prior to the break.
The Avs without secondary scoring have become too easy to play against. NHL team now know this and have made the necessary adjustments to focus on the first line and Makar with no fear from the other three lines.