Breaking Down: Making Chicken Salad out of…

Coming off a tough luck performance at the Air Force Academy last Saturday this week looked difficult on paper. It definitely ended up that way but not for the reasons on said piece of paper. I threw out 3 points as the target for the week on the BR pod, they had that halfway through. They lost two (more) top 6 forwards along the way but kept right on chuggin’. Special teams had been killing them but they ended up a net +1 there. Backup goalie Pavel Francouz struggled vs the powerhouse Lightning then gave up 2 goals in 3 games. Bottom line, somehow they ended up as the best team in the league this week and that should be scary for everyone else.

Projectile Lineup

The Avs lost Mikko Rantanen, again, to some sort of injury in the upper left quadrant of his body. The word was “weeks” on that but maybe not as many as initially thought. Andre Burakovsky was not present on the bench for the Kings game. He’s either sick or has a shoulder issue. Maybe both. Maybe his shoulder is sick, who knows.

Eagles goalie Hunter Miska signed an NHL contract last week and was called up after Grubi went down in the Springs. Joe Sakic indicated that finding a more experienced 3rd goalie (and current backup) would be a priority as we close in on tomorrow’s trade deadline. This is no slight to Miska, who’s done a wonderful job in Loveland, but he’s not a guy you’d want starting in meaningful games down the stretch. Frank handled the b2b well this weekend but there’s two more coming up and he can’t play them all.

Martin Kaut was called up after Mikko came up lame on Monday and made his NHL debut vs the Islanders. More on that later. TJ Tynan was sent back to the Eagles and Sheldon Dries called up to take his place. No comment. Logan O’Connor was called up when Burky’s shoulder got sick. Good thing the Eagles were close by.

Kadri and Calvert are still week-to-week and Grubi is a bit of a mystery but he was put on IR so it doesn’t seem close. Here’s what we saw vs LA last night:

Attack
Landy – Mack – Donskoi
Jost – Compher – Nichushkin
Nieto – PEB – Kaut
Dries – Kevin – LOC

D
Sam – EJ
Graves – Makar
Big Z – Cole

Gardiens
Frank
Miska

Scratch: Barbs, Burky (sick UBI)
Injured: Mikko (UBI), Calvert (LBI), Grubi (LBI), Kadri (LBI), Willie (ABI)

The defense has been free from injury but the staff messed around with the pairs a bit this week. Big Z and Sam were together for a couple games but they decided to go back to Sam and EJ together. Z did a nice job shutting down Barzal on Wednesday but for regular game play they like to limit his minutes.

The forward lines are a work in progress now that we’re back to having the nightly injury. Against LA, Donny and Nuke went back and forth between Mack and Compher’s lines. FWIW, it seemed to be more effective when Donny was with the 2HM.

Team Stats

Statistically it was a weird week for the Avs as one would expect. It was a total PDO fest with a 5v5 shooting percentage of 6.7% and save percentage of .961. Holy cow, way to go Frankie. Goals per expected goal cratered at 0.8, that’s really bad. On the other hand opponent goals per expected goal was 0.46 which is shocking. They played 3 teams that are terrible at scoring so that’s not as much of an outlier as it seems but the offense is going to have to pick it up.

Game pace was a little slow at 112 shots per hour but not incredibly so. The theme of the week was decent shot rates in games that were close a large percentage of the time but no danger or finishing ability for either the Avs or their opponents. This is right out of the Jared Bednar handbook, when times get tough – suppress everything.

The suppression leaked over into special teams too. The power play, which had shown signs of life last week, took a turn for the worse and went 1 for 14 with the only goal scored happening 5 minutes into the first game and the primary points going to two players that didn’t finish the week in the lineup (Burky/Mikko). After that it was pretty much Mack and Makar noodling around 60 feet away from the goal and doing nothing of value. Ray Bennett is going to cost Makar the Calder Trophy, which is a shame. The penalty kill had a good week, stopping all 8 chances, but again this is against 3 teams that never score in the Islanders, Ducks and Kings so take that for what it is.

TOI

Top 6 forwards at 5v5 were Mack (17), Burky (16, in 3 games), Landy (15+), Donskoi (15), Compher (14) and Nuke (13+). Kamenev was low man of those that dressed for all 4 games at 8:07, TJ Tynan averaged 6 minutes in his 2 games before returning to the Eagles.

The defensive regime went Makar (17+), Sam (17), Cole (16+), EJ (16), Graves (15+) and Big Z (14).

Topics

The tempo of Avs injuries has been incredibly odd this year. An onslaught early in the year, then a couple months of nearly perfect health and now back to another onslaught. It’s focused mainly on forwards and Philipp Grubauer too with EJ and Makar being the only defensemen missing significant time. Even weirder than that, they win more with half the roster on IR.

Pavel Francouz signed a 2-year extension with Colorado this week, well-deserved in my opinion. He’s been a fantastic backup and his basic numbers have him close to the top of the league in a few categories. Does this mean he’s better than Grubi? Perhaps, but not currently. Grubi sees more difficult chances and deals with them better, that’s pretty important. Frankie wins more often, which is nice, but that’s not a goalie stat despite what you hear on tv. Of course it’s really hard to stop high-danger chances when you’re not dressed because of injury and that’s something that has been a bit of a black mark for Grubi this season. Last year the Avs got really lucky with goalie injuries, Francouz played in two games total and only in relief. This year they didn’t prepare adequately for them and it’s been a big oops on management. They traded a defensive prospect for an injured goalie during training camp instead of buying one on July 1st and now they are in position to give up even more assets to buy another at deadline prices. A case can be made that they’re not going to give up much and it will end up thinning the herd a bit but they could have used those assets on something that turns into another Ryan Graves for instance. Oh well, there’s a lesson here somewhere I’m sure.

Oh yes, the deadline. I’m no fun so I hate deadline trades. The Avs don’t appear to need anything other than another 3rd goalie and a new PP coach so I would prefer them stand pat. If they thin the AHL herd by a player or two, fine. The Avs have the most wins and goals in the Western Conference and just took 7 out of 8 points with several key players out. Nothing they add will make a noticeable difference in how the rest of the season plays out and giving out any of the top prospects or draft choices can only hurt them.

To finish on a good note I’ve saved the best for last. Martin Kaut made his Avs and NHL debut on Wednesday against the New York Islanders. On Friday, a heady forechecking play led to his first NHL point – the game-winning assist in a 1-0 win vs Anaheim. He definitely looks like he belongs so far, and much more than any of the other callups from Loveland this season. He could plateau or hit the wall soon like we often see with young guys in their first NHL stints but we are seeing an NHL player sooner rather than later and that’s a good thing. It won’t be long until he’s up for good.

Next up

Deadline day tomorrow, be sure to tune in for our all-day coverage on the Burgundy Review discord server. Audio in the Staff Commentary channel and text everywhere else if you need to be discrete at work.

After that the Sabres come to town on Wednesday then the guys head East to Beautiful North Carolina, Nashville and detroit.

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