Jared Bednar still searching for that elusive consistency with Avalanche

The big picture has a nice view: An 8-2-1 record overall, six of the first 11 games having been on the road. But it’s how those two regulation losses happened that was bugging Jared Bednar late Saturday night, after his Colorado Avalanche team lost 5-2 at home to Anaheim.

For Bednar, there are no brownie points for having one great game, like the Avs did last weekend in smoking Tampa Bay on the road, and in Vegas on Friday. It’s how you build on those kinds of things that matter more to Bednar, and so far the Avs have flunked two of those tests in his eyes.

“I didn’t like the way we responded after playing a real good game in Tampa, when we went to St. Louis. I didn’t like that game at all. Now we did the same thing again after Vegas. Now it’s something we have to address,” Bednar said.

The Avs had just played a sensational game the day before in Sin City, so there was definitely a feeling of anticipation in the air when they took the ice to a sold-out, loud crowd. It almost felt like there might be a coronation, of sorts, from the jazzed-up crowd.

And then the Avs went out and just kind of floated around and tried to look like they were really something, with fancy-dan type of play. Before the game was 13 minutes old, after some turnovers and lackadaisical back-checking, it was 2-0 Anaheim. And, yeah, that mystified Bednar a little.

When will his team learn: you have to play with the same work ethic in this league every single night. Not just every other game.

“In some of these games, and some portions of games, we’re not managing the puck properly,” Bednar said. “Like in the first period, you can’t turn the puck over in the neutral zone and expect to go score goals. It’s too cute. When our buy-in is there, we’re a really good team. It’s a recognition that we’ll have to mature through it. I hope that it doesn’t take too long, but we’ve seen it enough now over (11) games that when we give up scoring chances, it’s because we’re mismanaging the puck and not playing to our strengths, which is our forecheck and our O-zone play.”

Pierre-Edouard Bellemare, the senior-most member of the team at 34, said the Avs missed an opportunity to really make a statement to everyone with a strong game following that gem in Vegas.

“We didn’t show up in the first and that was the game,” Bellemare said. “To beat any team, you have to come to play and, like I said, we didn’t show up in the first. It cost us. Simple as that. Every team has back-to-backs, and even if your main energy isn’t there, at least your mental (game) and focus has to be there. That’s what hurt us; maybe the focus wasn’t there at the start.”

Bednar wasn’t too thrilled with his captain, Gabe Landeskog, in this one. Not only was Landeskog a minus-2 and failed to put up any points, he took a couple of retaliation penalties, the second of which led to Anaheim’s big power-play goal in the third that made it a 4-2 game after the Avs had been coming on.

“It was uncharacteristic, right?” Bednar said of Landeskog. “They were playing to win and we weren’t ready to go, and we’re retaliating and we’re reacting instead of dictating.”

Landeskog, who has only one point in his last six games, knows this team still won’t go anywhere near where it wants if they take periods off like they did in the first.

“When that team gets out to a lead, it makes it easier for them to play like they want to do. But I think it was more about us tonight, and what we didn’t do, than what they did. It was one of those games where you get off to a sloppy start and try to find it offensively, but guys are kind of on their own and not communicating hard enough. Coming back home after a long road trip, you need to show up better than we did tonight. It’s unfortunate. It’s not good enough for anybody, and we know that and it’s a valuable lesson for everybody.”

Bednar hopes that last sentence proves more than just talk.