Breaking Down: Avs/Panthers, Game #7

This game is a tough one to tear apart. The whole team looked horrible in the 1st period then roared back in the 2nd. The top line was lousy all night. The power play has predictably fallen off a cliff and now actively hurts the team on a regular basis. On the bright side, two points!

Projectile Lineup

Nathan MacKinnon was a question mark until game time but was able to start. Nikita Zadorov returned after getting benched vs Pittsburgh, Barbs had the evening off.

Landy – Mack – Mikko
Burky – Kadri – Donskoi
Willie – Jost – Comphs
Nieto – PEB – Calvert

Sam – EJ
Cole – Makar
Graves – Big Z

Grubi
Frank

Scratch: Barbs, Nichushkin, Kamenev
Injured: none

Team Stats

The Cats started off with a 9-2 shot run then adroitly gave the Avs ineffective PP 4 minutes to look like ECHLers. A good shift coming out of the double minor gave us some hope with a Donskoi goal but Florida picked up where they left off right after with a 12-5 run to end the period along with adding a 3rd goal. The 2nd was pure dominance by Colorado, a long 19-5 shot run that took up most of the period saw them tie, give up the lead then tie once again. The 3rd was a mixed bag of sloppy play, some penalties that we could do without and a couple of strong shifts near the end. OT was fairly similar until Mack finished the night off doing what he does best.

Shot attempts at 5v5 were dead even at 44, which is pretty similar to the shots on goal  totals for both teams overall in the PIT game Wednesday and last night. Shot pace at 5v5 seemed frantic at times but ended up fairly mediocre at 115 per hour thanks to the sludgy 3rd. During the “fun” part of the game (P1 & P2) it was up at 134 shot attempts per hour.

The Avs power play is in freefall, 0 for the last 9 with 2 shorties given up in that time. They are in the bottom 4 in the NHL in CF/60 and xGF/60 and dead last in unblocked shots and shots on goal per hour. They’ve also gone from 7th in the league to 14th in efficiency over the past week, now at 21.4%. The PK stopped all 4 Panthers chances and has rebounded after some early season issues, rising to 9th in the league now so at least one of the special teams coaches knows what the heck he’s doing.

TOI

Top 6 forwards were Mikko, Mack, Gabe, Donskoi then a small gap down to Kadri and Burakovsky. In all situations it was Mack (21:36), Mikko, Donskoi, Gabe, Kadri then a 4 minute gap to Burakovsky (14:31). JT Compher was low man 5v5 at just over 8 minutes and Jost was 12th overall with just 9.

The defensive regime went EJ, Sam, Z, Cole, Graves and Makar with some pretty big gaps in usage. Overall it went EJ (25+), Sam (22), Z (21+), Cole (19+), Graves (15) and Makar (14). After playing 11:28 in the first half of the game Makar only had 5 shifts and 2:41 in the final 29 minutes. He was struggling so it’s not a surprise but that’s a pretty massive dropoff.

During the opening homestand usage was much more clustered. Determining cause and effect here is a little dicey but as the TOI gaps have widened the team’s play has been less effective and consistent. JB doesn’t really try to match lines so whether this is a road vs home thing is unknown.

Individual

Let’s go line-by-line here just for kicks.

– The 3HM looked terrible for the 2nd game in a row. Mack’s dealing with the charley horse he denies having and Landy has some issue that kept him out of practice last week. Whether these are contributing factors is up in the air but bottom line is that they’re getting smoked far too often. We’ll see how stubborn JB gets with this but putting Mikko with Kadri could pay off huge in the long run.

– Kadri’s line was pretty awesome. Donskoi had his best game so far with a goal and 2 assists. Burky’s 2 goals in 86 seconds was fantastic. Kadri got blanked but was winning lots of faceoffs, hitting people and whatnot. They were carrying the team for most of this game.

– Bellemare’s line was a little up and down. JB said he really liked them but while Nieto scored a cracker of a goal they were also on the ice for 2 of the Cats goals. I like when this line is up because they definitely create energy the team builds on.

– We’re back to having a throwaway 4th line that has no real role unfortunately. I think Tyson Jost has been one of the Avs most consistent players over the first 7 games and putting him at center is the correct call. In 3 years he’s never had any consistent chemistry with Compher so that’s a problem and Wilson has been a ghost so far. Jost and Willie got benched for most of the 2nd half of the game. What Coach Bednar has to ask himself is if he has a line that he doesn’t want to use then why put it together in the first place? It’s his own damn fault it doesn’t have a role.

Burgundy Narrative Metric

– “Best guys being your best guys” gets a (-) ah, no
– Quality vs Quantity gets a (+) both were decent
– Power Play Watchability gets a (-) someone should get fired for this
– The Dreaded Turtle gets a (+) tie game so no chance
– Starting Goalie Battle% gets a (+) rough start but boy did he play well in P3
– Referee Oppression Index gets a (+) didn’t care for this crew’s game management. ok, the Avs were standing around in the 1st, but the penalty differential in the 3rd was bizarre.

Total: +1¾

Next up

Right back at it tonight vs Tampa

Thanks as always to the NHL and Natural Stat Trick for numbers and visuals