Analysis: Avalanche didn’t play well but still won, which portends for better things – maybe

I had to blink a few times and rub my eyes a bit to determine if what I was seeing on my laptop screen was in fact real. Thine eyes did not deceive me…indeed it was the Colorado Avalanche on my monitor.

Sure enough, I did just watch a live ice hockey game in late July. It was 90 degrees in Denver today. A balmy 82 in Edmonton. Here I sit in shorts and a t-shirt, parked next to my condo’s A/C unit, sweating, watching hockey. I’m happy.

Despite my locality and lack of AltitudeTV, given the game is blacked out locally — which matters very little considering I live in a Comcast household anyway and they don’t pick up Altitude — I was still able to stream the game…through some underhanded methods, we’ll call it. As much as the major sports leagues do their darndest to shut down third-party/streaming services, like I told Dater earlier in last week’s “Can’t Hear What Jeremy Says” podcast, the internet will always and forever stay undefeated. There will always be a back-alley option. Oh, and as a disclaimer, so as to not incriminate myself, let’s say I watched it legally.

But I digress. Back to the hockey. The Avalanche played for the first time in 139 days and withstood the Wild by a score of 3-2.  

“It was nice to get back out there in a game-type scenario and move the puck around,” Nazem Kadri said after the game. “I think in that first period we definitely had a bit of rust we had to shake off. But as the game went on we played better and we’ll look to do that at the start of the next game.”

It was…well, like Kadri implied, probably everything you’d expect from an exhibition game that was played after having the last four-and-a-half months off. It was at times maybe a little sloppy, perhaps a lot of bit sloppy. Nathan MacKinnon hasn’t skipped a beat (link to his goal) and special teams got a little more practice than maybe they would’ve liked. But maybe that’s not such a bad thing, right?

“At least we got a lot of practice for our special teams, our PK and our PP,” Joonas Donskoi said half-jokingly, but also quite serious. “PK looked really good today. Sometimes you hope in a pre-season game you get more 5-on-5 to get that going, but it was what it was. At least we got some practice for our special teams.”

“For me it was a bit of a bonus, a blessing in disguise, to just work on the PK,” Kadri agreed. “I don’t see ourselves taking that many penalties when the games really count…guys just need time to get back in the rhythm.” 

On the note of Kadri, he shared a powerful moment with Avalanche teammate Pierre-Edouard Bellemare and Minnesota Wild players Jordan Greenway and Matt Dumba before the game. The four Players of Color were seen resting their hands on each other’s shoulders during the pre-game national anthems, so as to stand in solidarity with one another while expressing unity with minorities around the world. Story on that coming tomorrow morning. 

I asked head coach Jared Bednar after the exhibition contest to give me a positive and negative takeaway from his team’s first “real” game back. We all know Bednar demands intensity from his team (more on that here), and despite how chippy the game felt, the brazen head coach wanted to see a little more. 

“We’re definitely going to have to ramp our intensity and our checking. I didn’t like the way we checked early in the game and in turn we didn’t get any extended offensive zone time because we did a little too much standing around…they out-chanced us and out-shot us,” Bednar said. “…The checking part and that intensity and engagement is something I’m sure most teams are struggling with after a long lay-off, knocking a little rust off your game.”

Coach Bednar did like his team’s special teams, saying the power play and penalty-kill units were quote-unquote both “pretty good.” He mentioned he liked the goaltending quite a bit as well. Both Philip Grubauer and Pavel Francouz split the net pretty much 50-50, with the latter going a perfect 8-for-8, while the former went 18-for-20, facing what Bednar called “probably the more difficult shots of the day.” 

The penalty kill was quite impressive, probably one of the few highlights of the afternoon (aside from the MacKinnon goal). The PK went a near-perfect 7-for-8 and limited the Wild man-advantage to just five shots. Also of note: Conor Timmins slotted in as the sixth defenseman, skating alongside Nikita Zadorov. Sam Girard stayed out again, but Bednar said Girard’s absence is nothing to worry about and that he skated earlier in the day. Timmins received largely positive reviews from the coach, despite taking a four-minute high-sticking penalty after busting up Nick Foligno’s upper lip. Kevin Connauton slotted in at the seventh D-man position and played pretty well. He took the spot of Mark Barberio, who appears to be on his way out of Colorado. 

Now the real(er) thing starts, as the Avs move onto the round-robin portion of the tournament to determine seeding with the other top-three teams in the Western Conference. The Avalanche take on the St. Louis Blues in the first match-up this Sunday.