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The Colorado Avalanche The Dallas Stars smoked it 5-1 in Game 4. These are the Avs Studs and Duds of the game.
Studs
The person with the camera
Look, The Avs were actively terrible in this game.. Who was he supposed to put here? Because they were so horrible, I’m glad the cameraman had so much trouble because it meant we couldn’t see long stretches of this fiasco of a game and that felt more like mercy than frustration. If it had been a better game, it probably would have bothered me a lot more, but I’ll make a positive decision when I can get it.
Jonathan Drouin
Okay, but seriously, there was one Avalanche player who I thought played well for most of the night. Drouin returned to the lineup and filled the spot left vacant by the departure of Val Nichushkin and seemed immediately committed.
He played well with a physical touch and his skating was positive on an Avalanche team that looked like it had been skating in mud all night. He got a hard-working assist and advanced lines when Jared Bednar was trying to find a spark somewhere in the lineup.
I’m happy Drouin is back and healthy. He is funny.
Clothing
The stars of Colorado
The Avalanche’s three best players (Nathan MacKinnon, Mikko Rantanen, Cale Makar) are the key to winning a lot of hockey games. All three combined for the defining moment of this game in the first period when the Avalanche got their first power play and these three played a role in abandoning all effort and hanging on Alexandar Georgiev.
Wyatt Johnston pressured Makar into a turnover and Johnston proceeded to beat all of Makar, MacKinnon and Rantanen to score a shorthanded goal to put Dallas up 1-0. I honestly felt like the game was over at that point. It would have been less embarrassing if it had ended right there.
These guys were so bad that the Colorado power play had two chances and was outshot 4-1 and 1-0 by the Stars on penalties. They were brutal all night. They oscillated between frustration and disinterest and, once the game was decided, had brief, meaningless bursts of life.
They were far from the only poor players tonight, so don’t take this to mean that these guys are the only reason for Colorado’s embarrassing performance, but they are the core of the leadership group and set the tone for this hockey club. . The tone they set tonight seemed to be, “Well, we’ll be on vacation in Cancun soon.”
Where was the heart? Where was the rejection? Where was the fire that made this team so difficult a few years ago? People want to criticize the Avs for “only” making it to the second round over the years, but they’ve had multiple Game 7 losses in that time. we haven’t seen them this not competitive in a previous series, not even in the 2020 Dallas series, where they were ravaged by injuries and rallied from a 3-1 series deficit to take it to a Game 7 overtime before finally succumbing. .. to Joel Kiviranta’s hat trick.
This is a club that has shown that they may not win the Stanley Cup, but they are going to fight. Even last year’s extremely shorthanded team, which was cursed by everything under the sun, still pushed and pushed until the end of a painful Game 7 loss to Seattle.
That we didn’t see any of that tonight was the shocking element of the evening. How can they just give it up?
The news of the day
There are no excuses here. Everyone has obstacles in life and we all have to find ways to move forward. Sports present unique challenges because things like the playoffs are definable days on the calendar when players have to give their best.
For the news of Nichushkin’s six-month suspension to drop an hour before puck drop and then immediately follow up with Devon Toews unavailable for the game due to illness? It’s a double that even Mike Tyson would be proud of.
Again, I’m not excusing Colorado’s terrible performance in the game, but that’s an emotional stone that was thrown at them immediately before they had to take the ice for warmups. It is difficult to draw adequate parallels with everyday life situations, but I can see that it would be a lot to take in.
Jack Johnson and Andrew Cogliano’s pithy post-game comments about Nichushkin, in particular, strongly suggest to me that the locker room was very unhappy with how the day played out. That’s just me speculating, but that’s my interpretation of the situation.
I’m not here to judge Nichushkin or his decisions, but rather to comment on how everything unfolded so close to puck drop. It’s a tough situation for those guys and now their season is on the brink.
Avs unsung hero
Alexander Georgiev
The third goal is unacceptable. Look, if a goalkeeper gives them up once in a while, that happens! However, Georgiev concedes goals from distance regularly, and you can’t dismiss them all and say, “But that screen in front of him!” He has to stop them and tonight he tied for the league lead in the postseason for low-danger goals allowed with nine. Nine!
That being said, the rest of his game was very good. He was the only reason the game wasn’t 4-0 after the first half. He fought hard and kept the Avalanche in it. I have him in this area because I feel bad for him right now. Even when he plays well, he statistically lights up. The Stanley Cup playoffs are that unforgiving.
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