Avalanche Training Camp
Good & Bad: Avalanche Stumble Offensively in Frustrating Loss to Minnesota

DENVER — With a big two points on the line, the Avalanche came out flat in each period and had one of their worst low-event offensive games of the season.
The two teams entered the third tied but the Wild added two early goals before Colorado could even get a shot on goal. Rather than overtake them in the standings, the Avs fell 3-1 at Ball Arena on Monday and instead let their Central Division rival gain a comfortable three-point cushion in the standings. The Wild also have a game in hand.
The Avs had 16 shots in the final frame but they all came after Minnesota’s two goals. It was too little too late.
“Up until the last 10 minutes, there wasn’t much urgency throughout consistently, at least for the first couple of periods,” Star defenseman Cale Makar said. “We got to make sure we find that early and play the whole game like that. It’s hard, but that’s what you gotta do to win.”
The only reason why the game entered the third knotted up at 1-1 was because of Mackenzie Blackwood. The goaltender made two ridiculous saves when it was 1-0 to allow the Avs a chance to stay in it. Nathan MacKinnon eventually worked his magic, capitalizing on a great individual effort off a give-and-go play with Samuel Girard to tie it up before the second intermission.
But that momentum didn’t carry over. It was the exact opposite.
The Avs let in goals to Yakov Trenin and Brock Faber before the four-minute mark while their offense completely ran dry. They had just 11 shots entering the period.
It was a frustrating offensive no-show.
“We have an opportunity to go past Minny with the win,” head coach Jared Bednar said. “So we know it’s a big game, and it’s an afternoon game — I kind of like them. Rested a little bit from the day before, and it was a struggle to create offense, like a real struggle to create offense. And then the turnovers.”
Minnesota controlled play early. It took five minutes for the Avalanche to get going. And it was largely because of Minnesota’s ability to disrupt play whenever the Avs had a chance to cycle the puck. The Avs couldn’t generate much offensively and that trend bled into the power-play, which looked slower and worse than it has during this recent stretch.
Jacob Middleton eventually opened the scoring at 12:18, firing a shot from the point with traffic in front of Blackwood. Minnesota took a 1-0 lead into the second while holding the Avs to four shots. The road team continued to control play early in the second while also drawing several penalties
The Avs took four minors through 40 minutes but killed them all off. They finished 0-for-3 on the power play as well.
“It felt like, multiple times in the game, just when we started to come on a little bit, we took a penalty,” Bednar said. “So those are momentum killers, especially when you’re playing a team that’s pretty dangerous on the power play.”
Good: Mackenzie Blackwood
Again and again, Blackwood continues to show the Avalanche why goaltending matters and how it could mask a lot of issues on days when you’re not playing quite your best. That felt like it was going to be the case again before the early third-period burst from the Wild, beating Blackwood twice on two similar shots.
But Blackwood was the best player on the ice for the Avs. There’s no argument. The first big stop on David Jiricek was a masterclass effort. It wasn’t even a desperation save where he throws his pad and stick to the other side and hopes to get lucky. He read the play, got the pad over with an athletic sprawling save, and did it quick enough to beat the goal.
On the second massive stop, he had some swagger in flashing the glove on a Joel Eriksson Ek shot. The similarity between both shots is they both came from right in front of the goal. It wasn’t just that he was making great saves. It’s that he didn’t have a lot of time to react to successfully stop both.
It’s too bad the team couldn’t get a win for him.
Bad: Power play
This seems like it could be copied and pasted from any of the previous losses. But the power play needed to step up today and couldn’t get the job done. It felt like every time the Avs drew a penalty, they came out of the PP without the momentum that they had going in. It was great to see them kill all four PKs but the power play could’ve been a difference in a tight-checking game where the offense ran dry at five-on-five.
Again, the issue is with their lack of creativity. They tend to overpass, but that wasn’t even an issue today because Minnesota got sticks in the passing lanes. They were able to do that because the movement just wasn’t there. Right when they gained the offensive zone, all five guys were stationary and made it easy for the opposing PK to read the play.
“We’ve got to find a way out of it,” Cale Makar said of the PP struggles. “Keep digging ourselves holes, obviously, by not scoring the power play. But we gotta find ways to put them in, especially today, when we get the opportunities to.”