Avalanche blow another one in third period at home, this time to Jets

One game is a fluke. Two games? Just one of those things. Three games is a trend. Four games? That’s a problem.

How big is the problem gripping the Colorado Avalanche suddenly? It’s starting to seem kind of serious, folks. While the Avs continue to play pretty decent hockey for stretches of games lately, they can’t finish anything and the losses are starting to pile up.

The latest – the team’s fourth straight at home, all in regulation, all decided in the third period of games that they either had the lead or were tied – was a gift-wrapped giveaway to the Winnipeg Jets on New Year’s Eve, 7-4. Despite outplaying the Jets for vast portions of the game, it seemed like every time the Avs made a mistake, the puck wound up behind goalie Philipp Grubauer. The Avs have now lost four straight games to Central Division opponents, five of the last six, and have the defending Stanley Cup champion and fellow Central tenant St. Louis Blues in next on Thursday night, a team they are 0-2-0 against so far.

The last couple of home losses like this, we heard some of the usual “We’ll learn from this and be better moving forward” stuff from the Avs dressing room. To the players’ credit, they didn’t slough it off and take that cliched easy route this time anyway.

“We have to find solutions,” said Mikko Rantanen, who had a poor, minus-3 game. “We have to figure it out right now, because our division and conference is really tough. We can’t lose these points, you know?”

The difference in this game: Jets goalie Connor Hellebuyck was much better than Grubauer, who has lost each of his last four starts. But Grubauer wasn’t helped by some lazy backchecking from teammates on two of the first three Winnipeg goals.  That said, Grubauer just hasn’t been making many clutch saves lately either. Hellebuyck made lots of difficult saves, particularly in the first two periods.

Avs coach Jared Bednar boiled this loss down to some poor, sloppy, lazy play away from the puck.

“Too many turnovers. If you just think about their goals, it’s odd-man rushes against,” Bednar said. “I didn’t like our rush coverage. They capitalized seemed like every chance they got off the rush. We gotta check. You have to check. You gotta check, to win. We’re doing plenty on the offensive side…but you gotta check. That’s 5-on-5, that’s details on the penalty kill, slow into the lanes, rush coverage is not good, not enough communication. It cost us. We gotta check.”

The big goal of the game, to me, was Winnipeg’s third, which broke a 2-2 tie with 5:07 left in the second and came just 54 seconds after Nathan MacKinnon ripped home a power-play goal. After MacKinnon scored, a trio of bad things happened – one of them which shouldn’t have.

Right after the MacKinnon goal, Jets defenseman Anthony Bitetto cross-checked J.T. Compher blatantly from behind. Somehow, referees called Compher for a coincidental roughing minor, a ridiculous call. Compher barely did anything.

But with both guys going off, it became a 4-on-4 situation. Rantanen turned the puck over in the neutral zone, then glided back, far behind the play as Mark Scheifele scored from wide open in the slot.

Gabe Landeskog tied it on the power play in the third period, but the Avs gave the lead right back. Nazem Kadri went to the penalty box for interference at 10:38 and the Jets scored seven seconds later, with Grubauer looking screened on a shot. That made it 4-3 and deflated the entire building.

The Avs have had to work so hard for their goals of late, but opponents are getting easy ones right afterward. That just saps everyone mentally.

“We’ve got to force it to be harder for (opponents to score),” Bednar said. “We’re not getting those easy goals. We’re working for everything we’ve got to get and we’re giving up easy goals.”

Colorado now is 0-9-1 when trailing after two periods, one of only two NHL teams (Buffalo the other) without a comeback third-period win. They also are 0-7-0 in games where they pulled the goalie for the extra attacker.

“We were playing well, then 4-on-4 we give up an odd-man rush off a turnover and seven seconds into a penalty kill, we give one up there,” Avs defender Erik Johnson said. “We’re finding different ways to lose every night lately, and it’s frustrating and we’ve got to figure a way out of it now. The chances were definitely there, but it’s just going the wrong way for us right now. Nobody is happy about it, but there’s ebbs and flows throughout the season. You’re not trying to peak in January, you try to peak when it matters. But we want to get out of this funk as soon as we can.”