Colorado Avalanche lean on their depth in successful road trip
It wasn’t pretty, but the Colorado Avalanche walked out of Montreal with the 5-4 shootout win over the Canadiens in a wild game that saw the Avs blow another third-period lead. Six days after the Avs watched a 3-1 lead over the Dallas Stars dissolve in 20 seconds and force them to win in overtime, Colorado watched a 4-1 lead turn into a 4-4 hockey game in the span of 4:08.
It took what was a dominant finish to a road trip and turned into a chaotic, messy survival to snatch the second point from the hands of the feisty Canadiens in front of their electric home crowd.
By the end of the game, we saw center Brock Nelson standing tall as the hero of the day as he scored a goal and an assist before tallying the game-winning goal against Samuel Montembault in the shootout as Colorado’s fourth shooter. How did we get to that point?
The Avalanche seemed determined to lose this game
The Avs were close to blowing the Canadiens out at various points in this game and when Nelson’s deflection 3:58 into the third period gave the Avs a comfortable 4-1 lead, their entire demeanor changed. They had been working hard all game and they came out with a killer instinct to start the third period, putting several shots towards the Montreal net and trying to get the extra insurance goal to tell the rowdy Montreal crowd that there would be no epic comeback this time.
Nelson’s goal should have been that moment. I don’t know if the team simply relaxed or if their legs started to get heavy with the weight of their third game in four nights, all on the road, stacking up on them. I don’t know the answer. If you ask them, they probably don’t know the answer either.
For my money, the meltdown in the third period was not helped by goaltender Mackenzie Blackwood allowing two goals that I felt he absolutely should have stopped and the team’s play really wasn’t so bad. Yes, the Habs had the momentum and the building was rocking and they were pushing, but they weren’t swimming in dangerous chances over and over.
However I feel about it, they blinked away a 4-1 lead and found themselves in a 4-4 game. The encouraging part was that they responded to that pretty well as they pushed harder at the end of regulation and had some good looks to win the game in regulation. It didn’t happen for them, but you could feel good about their process after the game-tying goal. Blowing the three-goal lead was their first attempt at throwing this game.
The second came in overtime when they got a power play and generated plenty of shots and chances, but couldn’t finish. This was the theme of their collapse tonight. The process was good, but the result was lacking. They moved into the shootout, where Blackwood is historically pretty terrible and has openly talked about how much he hates them.
Naturally, things started off great. Blackwood stopped the first two Montreal shooters while Charlie Coyle got his first (unofficial) goal as an Av by scoring as Colorado’s first shooter. The Avs had three chances from there to finish the Canadiens off. Val Nichushkin failed to score, Blackwood got beat by Patrik Laine, and then Nathan MacKinnon didn’t score. Once again, Colorado had the game in the palm of their hand but didn’t close it.
The fourth shooter for Montreal, Christian Dvorak, was stopped by Blackwood and Nelson mercifully ended this fiasco by clinching the game.
It was frustrating to see a team that had been so dominant for extended stretches of this game struggle so badly to put away a Canadiens team that is a fun story but is simply not on the same level as the Avs. The Avs are in a desperate struggle to try to pry second place from the fingers of the Dallas Stars for home-ice advantage in Round 1 and they have given away two regulation wins (the first tiebreaker in the standings) in the last week. The one against the Stars was obviously much worse because that means the Avs are trailing by three points with Dallas still having two games in hand, but this wasn’t great either!
Anyway, they did finally get the two points in the standings, hereby keeping the Stars within contact but also keeping the Minnesota Wild, who are only four points behind the Avs with one game in hand, at bay.
Brock Nelson shows out once again
It might have been a slow start for Nelson in Colorado, but these last two games were a hell of a way to show that maybe he’s getting a little more comfortable in his new environment.
Following Nelson’s two-goal outburst against the Ottawa Senators two nights ago, he scored two more points tonight and added the winner in the shootout. That’s obviously really important, but it’s notable that his line was Colorado’s best at 5v5 in this game. In 12:16 at 5v5, the Artturi Lehkonen-Nelson-Martin Necas line produced:
