Breaking Down: Avs/Knights, Game #10

The Avs closed out the first 10 games of the season with yet another dominating win vs a strong team. In half of their games they’ve scored 5 or more goals, that’s hot. Three times they’ve scored 6 goals, including last night of course, and those 3 games really stand out. Washington, Tampa and Vegas are all good teams and Colorado just rolled over them, on the road no less. The question here is did they all just have off nights when the Avs came to town or did the Avs completely dictate that they had bad nights. There’s no way to know for sure until June but this team looks absolutely terrifying right now.

Projectile Lineup

Mikko Rantanen has LBI and will be out for a spell. JB hinted the other day that it doesn’t seem all that serious but won’t know much until early next week. No callup was made. Val Nichushkin re-entered the lineup in JT Compher’s spot while Compher moved to the top line. Big Z and Makar have both been a little inconsistent so Ian Cole was paired with Brooksie while Z played mainly with Ryan Graves.

Attack
Landy – Mack – Compher
Burky – Kadri – Donskoi
Willie – Jost – Nichushkin
Nieto – PEB – Calvert

D
Sam – EJ
Cole – Makar
Graves – Big Z

Gardiens
Grubi
Frank

Scratch: Kamenev, Barbs
Injured: Mikko

Team Stats

The game opened with Bellemare scoring against his former team on the first shift and that was pretty much it for the Knights’ night. After an 11-0 shot run the VGK’s started to move the puck a little and push back. After a fracas in front of the benches gave us a little 4v4 the teams traded goals on the way to first inters. P2 was total domination with Makar scoring his 1st regular season goal, Kadri adding a PP tally and Calvert banking one in off of relief keeper Garrett Sparks from behind the goal line. The 3rd was score effect city, a bit of turtle and Calvert sealing it with a shortie as time wound down.

The Avs ended up a +54/-41 in 5v5 shot attempts but that’s only half the story. Through 40 minutes it was +46/-22. SOGs in all situations favored Colorado 40-26, in contrast to getting massively outshot by Tampa in that blowout. Game pace at 5v5 was a respectable 124 shots per hour, in the first two periods it was a more festive 136 per hour.

The Avs had 3 PPs, sort of. One was 2 seconds long, Kadri scored on the 2nd and the 3rd was the usual mess. Ok, I’ll take it. PK was perfect on the night at 4/4 (also with one bogus 2 second deal) and are consolidating their place in the top 5.

TOI

Top 6 forwards at 5v5 were Mack, Landy, Donskoi, Compher, Wilson and Jost. In all situations it was Mack (19:28), Landy, Comphs, Kadri, Donskoi and Jost at just 13:17. Matt Calvert was low man 5v5 at 8:42 and 11:07 overall.

The defensive regime went Big Z, EJ, Cole, Graves, Makar and Sam. Overall it was EJ (21+), Z (21+), Cole (20), Sam (19), Graves (18+) and Makar (17). Sam was getting rested in the 3rd, hopefully it’s just in anticipation of tonight’s game vs the Duck, and Z and Graves got a bunch of PT in garbage time.

Individual

– Cale Makar played his best game since last Spring and was rewarded with his first regular season goal. I think taking him off PP1 was a great idea and it’s letting him focus on 5v5 play now. He was much more involved and aggressive at both ends of the ice and it paid off.

– Mack hasn’t had the dominant start that he did last year but he’s scored in all 10 games, setting an Avs record. He’s top 10 in points with a fairly pedestrian 13.2% shooting percentage, which should scare the rest of the league. He’s also only averaging 3.8 SOG per game, last year he was at 4.45 for the season. When he takes off on one of his benders then look out. Frankly the Avs haven’t needed him to be spectacular so having that in the bank is pretty fun to think about.

– There are a few things I like about the 4th line. First of all, I like that JB has kept them to 4th line minutes because he’s had issues with overplaying grindy vets in the past. They come out fresh and provide energy this way and are way more effective. They don’t have great shot rates for but are pretty damn efficient with what they do create. PEB and Calvert are 5th & 6th in goals per hour in all situations, 5th & 4th in points per hour. I’ll take that from the 4th any time.

– Tyson Jost continues to impress. It’s difficult to pick out one single thing from shot metrics or points or any other metrics and that’s probably something that’s going to be the case for his career. The consistency of game is what I like and it’s purely an eye-test deal. He’s reading play so much better and hanging out in areas that allow him to be effective on the ice. Now that he’s got that dialed he can work on the little things that are going to make him versatile and valuable long term like shot generation & suppression and adding to his scoring rates.

Burgundy Narrative Metric

– “Best guys being your best guys” gets a (+) safe to say the top-heavy lineup is a thing of the past
– Quality vs Quantity gets a (+) quantity was good, not much quality but didn’t need much
– Power Play Watchability gets a (+) one good, one bad
– The Dreaded Turtle gets a (+) up by 4+ for the whole 3rd, you betcha
– Starting Goalie Battle% gets a (+) this was basically a night off for Groob, wouldn’t be surprised if the Avs were considering putting him back in tonight.
– Referee Oppression Index gets a (+) none were injured so good night for them

Total: +5¾

Next up

Back home tonight, finally, vs Anaheim

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