Avalanche kick away another game in third period at home, this time to Wild

The record in the last six games: 2-4-0. The home record in the last three games: 0-3-0. All three, blown leads in third periods.

The hard truth about the Colorado Avalanche right now: they are not playing very good hockey. Sure, there was that nice win in Vegas before the Christmas break and, yeah, there was a solid win in Chicago on national TV a week before Christmas.

Otherwise, there have been two straight home losses to out-of-the-playoffs, Central Division opponents, the latest being 6-4 to the Minnesota Wild Friday night at the Pepsi Center.

The NHL is all about parity, there’s little separating the teams, etc., etc. I get that. But you can’t lose these kinds of games the Avs have lately at home, especially in the way they’ve been doing it. In all three of the recent home losses, the Avs have let things slip away in the third period.

There just seems to be a case of the jitters with this team at home right now. When games have been on the line, they’ve looked like a scared team. The Avs are now officially a better team on the road (13-6-1) than at home (10-6-2).  Mind you, the Avs did not play a terrible game Friday night. But they let another one get away, with a lead, in the third period. You just can’t do that and call yourself an elite team.

This time, a 4-3 lead turned into a tie game just past the midway mark of the third, on a Mats Zuccarello rebound putback past Pavel Francouz. Then, with 8:02 left, light-scoring Wild forward Victor Rask beat Francouz with an unscreened slap shot from the left boards to the far post.

Francouz had one of those nights where he seemed to be fighting the puck, and the puck won.

The Avs took that 4-3 lead earlier in the third on Matt Calvert’s second goal of the night and 10th on the season, a great tip of Pierre-Edouard Bellemare’s shot. But once again, like they’ve done of late, they failed to keep doing the things that got them the lead.

And, they paid for it. Again.

“It sucks,” said captain Gabe Landeskog. “Couple defensive breakdowns on those last two (even-strength) goals.”

Here is Jared Bednar’s postgame presser. As he noted, it wasn’t just the bad finish to this game – it was a bad start, too. It was 2-0 Wild before the game was 10 minutes old, as the Avs looked rustier than a 1976 Dodge Dart coming out of the break.

https://t.co/G5HWeWOgBc

— Adrian Dater (@adater) December 28, 2019

NOTES AND OTHER OBSERVATIONS

• Once again, special teams played a negative role in a loss. The Avs allowed a second-period power-play goal to the Wild’s Brad Hunt, and failed to convert on any of their own PPs. That, despite the return of Cale Makar to the first PP unit. The Avs probably could have sealed a win away with a goal on a third-period PP, but as has been the case often of late at home, they might have gotten a little too fancy and/or unselfish with the puck. The Avs are now 1-11 on the PP at home in the last three home games.
• Philipp Grubauer will start Saturday’s game in Dallas.
• I thought the Wild would challenge the goal credited to Nathan MacKinnon in the final minute of the second period. MacKinnon turned his skate to a pass from Makar and it deflected in. Wild coach Bruce Boudreau, probably fearing a lost challenge and a power play to start the third period for the Avs, elected not to challenge.
• Erik Johnson didn’t help his goalie out at all on the Rask goal that made it 5-4. From his own end, he made a careless pass into the neutral zone that was picked off and immediately went the other way, with Rask having too much space to shoot the puck down the side of the ice Johnson is supposed to protect.
• I didn’t notice the line that features Tyson Jost and J.T. Compher much tonight. Nor, the second line of Burakovsky-Kadri-Donskoi. None of the five players had a point.
• Landeskog’s late first-period goal was a thing of beauty, unassisted off the rush.
• I don’t know what to say about the officiating tonight, other than it was awful. The final indignity of the night for the refs (and the Avs) was a terrible coincidental minor penalty that included one to Nazem Kadri – then a misconduct penalty on Kadri for arguing about it. He had every right to argue, as Kadri was hog-tied by the Wild’s Ryan Hartman down to the ice. The Wild added an empty-netter right after the faceoff and that was that.
• Kadri was called for embellishment on this play. Where????

Kadri got a penalty on this pic.twitter.com/brPhPqvTQ4

— Adrian Dater (@adater) December 28, 2019

• Some in Twitter-world said Kadri deserved a penalty because he had his left arm too much into Hartman’s body. Well, OK, then, why didn’t the refs call that instead of embellishment? How do you embellish literally getting hog-tied to the ice? There were some other bad calls/non-calls tonight. That was the capper.
• The Avs had a big disparity in third-period goal differential much of the season. Now? It’s down to 36-34.
• I think the Avs are just too passive on the penalty kill. They don’t put enough pressure on the point men. I would adopt a system where they put more pressure on the puck carriers, but that’s just me.
• The Avs have not been good late in games, with the goalie pulled for the extra attacker, down by a goal. They are 0-5, in fact, in 6-on-5 situations. Tonight didn’t count, because it was a 5-on-4 empty-netter the Wild scored, but for all intents and purposes it was the same thing.