Breaking Down: Avs/Blues, Game #26
Last night the Eagles and Grizzlies forced their games to the shootout, and won, while the Avs continued their streak of futility at 3v3. I’m sure they have some sort of strategy or system which the coaches have explained many times. I’ve never seen it. They get out there and try to play pond hockey while the opponent calmly executes a tried and true plan that works every time. Take the point and run.
Projectile Lineup
Sheldon Dries was re-assigned to the Eagles on Thursday. Tyson Barre missed his 3rd straight game. Mark Barberio suffered UBI vs the Pens and was unable to play. Mark Alt was called up from Loveland to take his spot. Varly returned to the nets.
Scratch: Bourque, Barbs (UBI), Barrie (LBI)
Injured: none
Team Stats
The Avs got off to a hot start with a 4-0 run and drew a penalty. Some casual play after that expired led to Tarasenko giving the Blues a 1-0 lead and then a 7-1 shot run right after. The Avs gained the momentum back but a couple of dumb penalties killed that off and gave St Louis a 2-0 lead at intermission. A Big Z goal was a promising start to P2 but that was about it unfortunately since that would turn out to be their only SOG at 5v5. EJ’s retaliation against Steen gave the Blues a 5 minute PP, which the Avs killed, and the energy from that carried them through an 11 minute stretch of total domination with 13 shot attempts for and zero against. Mikko capitalized on a PP early in the 3rd for the tie and things started looking up. It was back and forth for the rest of regulation leading to the inevitable loss in OT.
Wheeeeeee (s/t to StephHouse)
Tale of the tape 5v5 was +32/-50, which interestingly enough means it was even except for the 2nd period. You can run down most of the stats and see the same results. SOG in all situations were 37-29 St Louis. Game pace was a mundane 111 shots per hour at 5v5.
Power play was 1-4 but choked on a lot of good chances and pretty much set up the Blues opening goal. PK was 2-3 but that doesn’t present the weight of killing off an entire 5 minute major.
TOI
Top 6 forwards at 5v5 were Landy, Mack, Mikko, Carl, Calvert, Kerf and similar in all situations with Wilson taking Kerfoot’s place. Vlad Kamenev was low man at 5:35.
The defensive regime was a mess with Barrie & Barbs out, EJ getting ejected 23 minutes into the game and Cole taking a fighting major early. The workload fell on Sam and Z mostly, then Cole a minute behind, a 3 minute gap to Nemeth and Alt trailing around the 9 minute mark. In all situations Sam played 26:36, Cole 25:03, Z 23:22 and Nemeth just under 20.
EJ was on pace to play almost 30 minutes when he was dismissed and that left a big hole to fill, especially in the 3rd period when the Avs were clinging to a standings point. They actually played well and it wasn’t as much as a turtle as the 2nd. Here’s how the TOI shook out:
Girard – 9 shifts, 10:53
Cole – 9 shifts, 8:59
Big Z – 8 shifts, 7:51
Nemeth – 9 shifts, 6:45
Alt – 5 shifts, 2:57
No wonder Sam looked a little tired on that OT goal. The 9 shifts for he and Cole are a little misleading since they were double shifted a couple times and Sam played the whole PP+ (2:32 long shift) near the end. The guys in the booth were selling Mark Alt as a ready-to-go NHL defenseman they had waiting for this very situation in the AHL. That’s not the case. He wasn’t a total disaster but he was way over his head all night. This was the perfect game to call up someone with a future in the org like Nic Meloche and they went risk-averse instead. If the staff is left wondering where the organizational defensive depth is this morning it’s because they don’t give opportunities like this to players that could take the experience and improve on it down the road.
Individual
– Mikko picked up an unassisted PP goal for the lone point on the top line. The Blues did a fair job neutralizing them with the O’Reilly line. Corsi together was only +8/-12 on the night. I don’t think this is a blueprint for success for other teams but it happened and the best thing to do is learn from it.
– As far as the other 3 lines go, it was a grisly evening on the shot board as well. There were a few positives outside of the 2nd period. I thought Sven Andrighetto had a solid game and he ended up on some ad hoc lines in the 3rd period. I’m normally not a Matt Calvert fan but I liked his performance for once. Lots of guys were notso hotso in the finishing department, including some breakaways and 3 or 4 grade A chances for Colin Wilson but some nights you get goalied.
– I guess we have to discuss EJ’s penalty. Obviously it hurt the team and will be a candidate for a suspension from DOPS. I don’t think the hit was that bad but we only had one camera angle on it. Depending on what the league has to look at they could throw the book at him. Steen didn’t play after (shows one shift but not too sure about that one) but the Blues are pretty savvy about holding guys out until hearings are over. With Barrie and Barberio out this wasn’t a good time to go bananas but on the other hand St Louis was playing dirty and the refs chose not to de-escalate the situation.
Burgundy Narrative Metric
– “Best guys being your best guys” gets a (+) but a pretty weak one
– Quality vs Quantity gets a (-) time to get back to the process
– Power Play Watchability gets a (-) not a good show despite the goal
– The Dreaded Turtle gets a (?) not sure what that 2nd period was
– Starting Goalie Battle% gets a (+) Varly was just ok, not amazing
– Referee Oppression Index gets a (-) Wasn’t a fan of the way the game was managed. By the time it got out of hand in the 2nd it was too late to do something about it. The 2 penalties on the Avs late in the 1st with no corresponding calls on STL setup the whole Mack/EJ/Steen disaster. They let the game get away from them and it’s a shame for both teams that now have to live with the consequences.
Total: -2¾
Next up
Road trip to the East starting in detroit tomorrow night.
Thanks as always to the NHL and Natural Stat Trick for numbers and visuals
