Breaking Down: Avs/Flames, Game 22

The Avs suffered their second frustrating loss in as many days last night vs Calgary. Although they outplayed their opponent at key times the scoring has now dried up and magnifies any defensive deficiencies. This should be of great concern to the staff because we’re seeing a similar pattern to last year where the team, whether by design or destiny, is devolving game by game into a stifled, low-event mess that can’t put pucks in the net when they need to.

Team Stats

The game ended at +47/-52 (47%) which is respectable I guess. The first period they came out flat and got smoked, the second went great for the first 19 minutes and the 3rd was score-effect city. Shots were 28-26 but fell to 27-19 at 5v5, another symptom of ineffective play at even strength.

Special teams were a mixed bag. The PP was good twice and not so good twice but picked up a goal. The PK was good but unfortunately let in a goal on the only shot allowed on the first one.

TOI

EJ led the D overall but Sam Girard actually was 1st at 5v5 with 5 seconds short of 20 minutes. Big Z moved past Barbs again for 4th thank goodness and Miro barely played at all after an ill-advised d2d pass in P1.

The lines were totally blended in the 3rd so TOI is all over the place. Top (starting) line guys 1st then Compher, Sven and Willie filled out the top 6 at even strength. Toninato barely saw the ice in the 3rd and finished low man. Soderberg’s line had an off night and didn’t play as much as usual either.

The blender was a symptom of the scoring drought that the Avs have been in since the Caps game and some problems that occurred when everyone mailed it in for the last minute of the 2nd period. The Avs have 2 practices before they face Winnipeg on Wednesday and they really have to find some fresh line combos like I wrote about yesterday or they are in big trouble. This has to be fixed while it still is fixable.

Individuals

– Big Z scored a goal the officials couldn’t call back and had a performance I’d call just ok overall. That was the only goal at even strength and it came very late in the game.

– JT Compher moved up to the MacKinnon line after Mikko was demoted and took advantage. The thumb injury seems to be in the rear-view now and he’s looking more and more like he did early in the season. Time for him to get his own line again.

– Jon Bernier did fine for his 4th straight start and 2nd night in a row. If you want a better performance from a backup playing 3 games in 4 days then I don’t know what to tell you.

– Jared Bednar made zero changes to the lineup not to mention the lines for this back to back after a loss and it’s not the 1st time this year we’ve seen this. It hasn’t worked yet so stop doing that. If you lose then don’t change anything it makes it look like you thought it was luck or something dumb like that. I appreciate that giving some of these line combos ample time to find chemistry is a defendable strategy but at some point it’s just slamming their heads against a wall.

Burgundy Narrative Metric

– “Best guys being your best guys” gets a (-) yuck-o
– Corsi gets a (-) but was better than you think
– Power Play gets a (+) 1/3 in a mixed performance
– Turtle gets a (+) they jammed in the 3rd
– Varly% gets a (n/a) please come back Wednesday
– Referee Oppression Index gets an (-) some baffling calls both ways

Total: -1¼

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The Avs play Winnipeg on Wednesday and need to look a lot different or else