Avs player grades from 4-1 win over Kings

Happy Snowmageddon, and happy night to you, Avs fan. Another win over the Kings, a fairly routine 4-1 win. Avs were just too fast and too skilled for the Kings – though they played a pretty strong game in some respects. Avs move into third place in the division with the win, ahead of St. Louis – and they have three games in have two games in hand on the Blues. Let’s do some grades:

Gabe Landeskog (B) – Solid game for the captain, who chipped in with an assist. He inadvertently screened Philipp Grubauer on the Kings’ only goal, his only bad moment of the contest.

Nathan MacKinnon (B) – Got his second straight empty-netter, courtesy of Mikko Rantanen. That was one of his three shots on the game. He deserves some easy goals like that.

Mikko Rantanen (B+) – The Moose is playing real well right now, hard and heavy on the puck. Had four shots on net and was robbed on one.

Brandon Saad (B) – Had an assist and was a plus-2. Didn’t play with the puck a ton, but he was a good contributor today.

Nazem Kadri (A+) – A goal and an assist and solid in the faceoff dot. He was called for a couple of ticky-tack penalties. His goal was a thing of beauty and got the Avs off to a good start.

Andre Burakovsky (A-) – Good, strong game from No. 95. It seems like he’s getting his mojo back. That was a goal-scorer’s goal, his marker that made it 2-0.

Valeri Nichushkin (A) – An assist, four shots on net, hard on pucks. He’s really playing well of late.

Tyson Jost (B-) – Good work on the penalty kill, but I thought he got rubbed off a couple too many pucks in the offensive zone. Had 11 Corsi events for and 11 against.

Matt Calvert (B-) – Kind of quiet out there, but it’s not like he was bad. His offensive game is still struggling to come around a bit, but you know he’s working hard.

Logan O’Connor (B) – Hard-working game, good on the forecheck.

P.E. Bellemare (B+) – Strong on the PK, a key difference in this game. Kings had five power plays to the Avs’ one – which was weird considering how often the Avs had the puck.

Joonas Donskoi (B+) – He got a goal off a bang-bang play that kind of salted the game away. He’s playing good, veteran hockey most of the time.

Dan Renouf (A) – Two assists, three hits and a plus-2 in a little more than 14 minutes of action. That works fine for a guy who had played just one career NHL game before a couple weeks ago.

Devon Toews (A) – Another rock-solid game in his nearly 28 minutes of ice time. Just very solid in all aspects.

Greg Pateryn (B+) – Nothing much to complain about here. He has added some good physicality since rejoining the linup.

Jacob MacDonald (B+) – Another solid game for the local kid. He’s a good skater and seems to play a pretty intelligent game most of the time.

Ryan Graves (A-) – He had a lot of nice defensive plays, including a couple of good blocks. Only negative was falling down and needing to take a tripping minor in the third.

Sam Girard (B+) – Good game for Le Tornade. He’s been maybe taking a little too much time with the puck on the power play of late, but that’s nitpicking.

Philipp Grubauer (A) – He had to make some really tough saves, including on a Kings breakaway in the second period. Too bad his fifth shutout got away at the end, but he keeps racking up the Ws.