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Avalanche Game 40 Plus/Minus: Disastrous Powerplay, Goal Reviews

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Avalanche Blackhawks

Losing to the worst team in the NHL is a new low for the Colorado Avalanche this season.

Despite having many chances to take a strangle hold of the game on the man advantage, the Avalanche could not get it done. The Blackhawks scored the lone goal in the third period, sending the Avalanche to their seventh loss in eight games.

As with every game, you take the good with the bad, so time to take a look at the pluses and the minuses in the game against the Blackhawks.

— The Powerplay

The Avalanche had multiple chances to take over this game. Three powerplays in the final eight minutes of the first period, and another powerplay after tying it up in the second should have been enough.

It was not.

The powerplays not only failed to create many high danger chances, it struggled to even enter the zone. The four minute powerplay to end the first period was a mess. It took three minutes for the Avalanche to even get into the zone and set up.

This was all against a bottom five penalty kill in the league.

The 0-for-5 night now puts the Avalanche at 1-for-25 since Nathan MacKinnon returned to the lineup. That is not how it was supposed to work.

– Lengthy Goal Reviews

I’m not even going to get into goaltender interference. At this stage, no one knows what’s goaltender interference and what isn’t.

This review took over two and a half minutes of the refs staring at an iPad, talking to Toronto to finalize the call. If you have to look at a play for that long just to determine a call like that, just go with the call on the ice. If it’s a clear cut call, you’ll see it right away.

– The Bottom Six…Again

Just nothing happening in the bottom six offensively, and they were on the ice for two goals against.

The top players are being overplayed because the Avalanche are getting nothing from the rest of the team, and until that changes, it will probably keep happening.

Darren Helm got hurt again, and the first shift after Ben Meyers replaced him, he took an offensive zone penalty.

The top players on the team are not perfect, because if they were, the Avalanche wouldn’t be in this slump. They can’t do it all, though.

+ Pavel Francouz

He didn’t have a great game (not bad either), but it’s nice to have another option in net back.

The penalty kill did not give up any goals, that was only because of Francouz. The clears were sloppy from the killers. Compher had a tough turnover behind his net that Francouz had to bail him out on. I really don’t know what Girard was doing with a soft backhand up the middle, because there were no Avalanche players in the vicinity.

Francouz played well, and Georgiev certainly needed the night off.

– A New Low

Up until now, we’ve all kind of chalked things up to injuries.

I don’t know if you can do that anymore.

There are still guys missing, but there’s no reason to be losing to struggling teams like they have been. And certainly no reason to be losing to a team this bad.

No one injured is coming back anytime soon. This group is going to have to figure it out.

Colorado's premier coverage of the Avalanche from professional hockey people. Evan Rawal, Editor-in-Chief. Part of the National Hockey Now family.

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