Adrian Dater
Well, that was a bit of a strange one. Like you, probably, I thought the Avs had this one in the bag already after Gabe Landeskog made it 2-0 with an easy putback goal on the power play. The San Jose Sharks haven’t been very good for a while now, and Colorado looked on its way to a fifth straight win over the team. (Insert buzzer sound here).
Not so much. Avs give up six unanswered goals and lose 6-2 to the previously sputtering Sharks.
The Avs just stopped doing everything that got them the lead, seemingly of the belief that they didn’t have to work too hard anymore, that the Sharks just might lay down for them. Buzzer sound again.
A lot of you were pretty upset after the game, if my text and twitter feeds are of any indication.
“Nothing ever changes with this team. Same mistakes over and over again.”
“When is Bednar going to light a fire under this team’s ass? When is someone going to light a fire under Bednar’s ass?”
I hear you, and I agree this team still has a bad tendency to let up whenever they get a little prosperity. Not enough killer instinct as a team, still. But, I don’t know, I think this was more just one of those nights. I had a feeling the loss of Cale Makar might start to make a difference, and tonight I thought that was exactly the case. No Makar takes a guy out of your lineup who can play 25 minutes with good puck possession.
Then, before the game, another jolt of sudden bad news: No Bo Byram (upper-body) either. So, two real good, young puck movers out of your top six – not ideal. Some of the D-men still on hand had rough nights, including Ryan Graves (-4). He was caught flat-footed on a key third-period Sharks goal and looked slow to react.
Philipp Grubauer had one of his poorer showings of the year, a bit too bouncy with his rebounds, a bit slow to react on a shot or two as well.
But, as Bednar seemed to harp on the most after the game, I thought the Avs’ forwards just kind of stopped skating and being aggressive after taking the 2-0 lead.
“We had one offensive outburst (Saturday), and we’re back to getting fancy and trying to skill our way through games. It’s not going to work. I believe our guys know that, but we got stubborn tonight,” Bednar said. “Some guys were cheatin’ it a bit offensively tonight.”
Mikko Rantanen. who took a costly interference penalty after failing to score on a good chance in the third, bemoaned his team’s poor third-period start, saying the team let the Sharks take it to them too much.
Bednar said some guys are making the “same mistakes over and over” and that it has to stop.
“We’re bringing it on ourselves. It felt very similar to the Minnesota game,” he said.
The next chance for atonement is back at the Shark Tank Wednesday night.
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