10 Observations: Miles Wood Taking Full Advantage of Latest Opportunity

Are the Stanley Cup playoffs here yet? Let’s make this short and sweet and get right into it.

The Avalanche lost 5-4 in St. Louis on Saturday.

10 Observations

1. Sam Malinski’s irrelevant goal ended a pretty cool streak. Before this loss, the Avalanche had won 30 straight games when scoring four or more goals. They were 30-2-0 when doing so.

This is even funnier when you realize those two regulation losses with four goals were the first two games of the season. I still can’t believe how bad the goaltending was back then.

2. Twelve straight wins for the St. Louis Blues is quite the run. The Vegas Golden Knights (or potentially Winnipeg) are going to have their hands full in the first round. Especially if Jordan Binnington continues to play this well.

3. Do the Blues have a chance of catching the Avs? Yes, but it’s very, very unlikely. With four games remaining for both teams, St. Louis has to make up six points on the Avalanche to catch them in the standings. For example, Colorado would need to go 1-3-0 and the Blues 4-0-0.

4. Would anyone be upset if that happened? Other than ending the regular season on a bad note, would this be the worst thing in the world? It’s not going to happen, but could you imagine if the Avs managed to avoid that slugfest in the Central Division entirely, at least for a couple of rounds?

5. I chatted with Jared Bednar about this before the road trip, but the one year over the past three that the Avs finished the regular season strong was the year they didn’t get out of the first round. It’s a weird trend, but it’s a reminder that it’s not worth panicking over a 2-2-1 stretch with a playoff spot already locked up.

6. Should we be alarmed by the lack of production lately from Valeri Nichushkin and Artturi Lehkonen?

7. One man’s injury is another man’s opportunity. Kudos to Miles Wood for taking advantage of these last two games, scoring twice and adding an assist. He’s also awoken the offensive side of Charlie Coyle’s game.

Not to get ahead of myself, but if Wood continues to play this way and becomes a valuable piece for the playoffs, it’ll make everyone — including him — forget about what’s been a tough season to date.

8. It’s not a perfect comparison, but if he pulls that off, it would remind me of Darren Helm in 2022. It’s not that Helm had a bad regular season, but his role wasn’t quite etched in stone until the playoffs.

Then, Bednar shifted him to center, and he developed instant chemistry with Logan O’Connor and Andrew Cogliano and led the league in hits. The rest is history.

As for Wood, his ice time is up in these past two games, and you could see him looking more like the 2023-24 player that made a good impression with a new team.

9. Good news regarding the Jonathan Drouin and Martin Necas injuries. Both are considered day-to-day. Necas remained with the team through the end of the road trip but was too sore to play. Drouin flew back to Denver after suffering lower-body injury.

The Avs are off on Sunday, so the next update will be on Monday at practice at Family Sports. Gabriel Landeskog’s going to be there, too.

10. Speaking of injuries, what’s the deal with Samuel Girard? He’s the only one we didn’t get an update on during this road trip. Unless I missed something.