Breaking Down: Avs/Blues, Game 48

The Avs were looking to begin a new win streak after the Montreal loss but ran into an old foe that had more answers than questions to begin the game. The final 35 minutes were solid and showed the process is still strong and intact. There will be some roster changes coming after the All-Star Break and hopefully the flu will have run it’s course, so we wait to see if the streak was a fluke or not.

Team Stats

Right off the bat the Avs scored a power play, but couldn’t capitalize, and the Blues went on an 11-3 attempt run which led to a PPG. Not crisp. That along with a 10-2 run to begin the 3rd were the only times that St Louis really dominated. Outside of that Colorado had them at +48/-28, granted a chunk of that was score effected but it showed that the game was a lot more evenly played than it seemed. Both teams had one even strength goal so I’m not looking at this as a beatdown at all. The winning margin came from the STL power play and a couple of pretty soft calls against the Avs giving them the opportunities.

Final tally was +53/-50 although that shrank to just under 50% when score adjusted.

The power play was blanked in 2 chances and is slowly slipping in the rankings once again, down to 11th at 20.2%. The PK had an off night killing only 1 of 3 but they still maintain 2nd in the league by a thin margin over the B’s.

TOI

The defensive regime went EJ, Z, Nemeth/Girard MOL the same, Warsofsky and Lindholm. The evolution of the pairings was the thing to watch last night. With Barberio out and Z and perhaps others suffering through the flu plus the debut of David Warsofsky, Nolan Pratt had a lot to manage. Wars and Lindy started out together but were really ineffective and got split up. Both seemed to settle in after that, which was nice. Shifts in the 3rd went EJ with 9, Big Z and Sam with 8, Wars with 7, Nemo with 6 and Lindy trailing with just 4.

The top 6 were Mack, Mikko, Landy, Carl, Comeau, Jost at 5v5 and overall. Again, it’s nice to see that Coach Bednar is going back to similar usage to the early part of the streak and before again. Although the 4th line was solid, especially AJ Greer and Dominic Toninato, they only had around 6 minutes of ice time and just 2 shifts in the 3rd period.

Individual

– The 4th line as I said was quite solid and the Corsi heroes of the night along with David Warsofsky.

This was a high-event game in general and these fellows kept up the pace in shots for and their suppression was quite good as well. Greer, Toninato and Warsofsky were all re-assigned to San Antonio after the game, better to play a game tomorrow night than to sit around on the beach I guess, but showed they can hang in the NHL. Hopefully we see them again soon.

– Shoutout to Anton Lindholm for his 1st NHL point on Alex Kerfoot’s goal. In 32 games this year plus another 12 last year he’s been close but no cigar and people were beginning to talk. He’s not offensively gifted by any means but 0-for-44 isn’t who he is either. Hopefully he can settle into a 10-15 point pace, which would be fine given his TOI and role.

– Jon Bernier keeps on ticking. He’s got to be exhausted but still saved 25/26 at even strength. Why the Avs struggle to PK on the road is beyond me at this point but I don’t lay this loss on him.

– Tyson Jost keeps making a case for more TOI. He also Assisted on Kerfoot’s goal and was a solid +15/-12 on the night with top 6 minutes. Given that he’s missed 14 games with a variety of injuries so far he’s a little ahead of expectations. Still only 19 too!

Burgundy Narrative Metric

– “Best guys being your best guys” gets a (-) I’m not reading much into this until we see who has the flu and what the team looks like next week
– Corsi gets a (+) but being + for 60 minutes is important and that didn’t happen
– Power Play gets a (-) Another long streak of ineffectiveness for us to grouch about
– Turtle gets a (+) the Blues turtle was pretty sweet tho’
– Varly% gets a (n/a) but Bernie% was still ok
– Referee Oppression Index gets a (+) The Avs were outplayed at times but both the calls that led to STL goals were garbage and so was the lack of make-ups later in the game.

Total: +1¾

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The Avs take the weekend off while Mack deals with the ASG miasma. Next game is Tuesday in Vancouver.