As expected, the Colorado Avalanche, on two days\u2019 rest, made easy work of the Calgary Flames on the second night of a back-to-back. That may have been the most obvious scheduled win of the season, and it was pretty much determined to be that from the day the schedule was revealed in mid-July.<\/p>\n
Still, the Avs have been inconsistent quite a bit in recent weeks and getting the easy two points hasn\u2019t always been a guarantee. It wasn\u2019t when they went into Philadelphia and played a Flyers team that had just one win in 10 games. It also was not the case last Sunday, which feels like forever ago, when they got dominated by the Nashville Predators playing on the second night of back-to-back.<\/p>\n
Avalanche lines: projected lineup and starting goalie \u2192<\/a><\/p>\n This was not any of those games. This was vintage Avalanche hockey \u2014 a 5-2 victory on Saturday night.<\/p>\n This one was also at home. Replicating it on the road is the challenge that faces head coach Jared Bednar\u2019s club right now.<\/p>\n \u201cI want to see it on the road. Like we\u2019ve been really good at home. Well, I don\u2019t know, depends what you classify as good. I think we\u2019ve been really good at home for this time of the year,\u201d Bednar said. \u201cBut you know, since early in the year, a recent pass on the road hasn\u2019t been great.\u201d<\/p>\n The big boys came to play. Artturi Lehkonen<\/a> had two goals, continuing his incredible start to the season. The other tallies came from Nathan MacKinnon<\/a>, Martin Necas<\/a>, and Brock Nelson<\/a>. MacKinnon and Necas each added an assist to finish with two points, while Cale Makar<\/a> led the way with four helpers. Devon Toews recorded two assists<\/p>\n Mackenzie Blackwood made his 10th start in 14 games to open the season and put up yet another solid performance. Blackwood is 5-1-0 in his last six games, making 25 saves against the Flames to improve to 7-3-0 overall. His save percentage climbed to .897, inching closer to .900. Blackwood has given up 14 goals in this six-game stretch.<\/p>\n \u201cThe effort was really good. I think intentions were right, played the right way, top line was really good,\u201d Bednar said. \u201cI think we didn\u2019t give up a lot of scoring chances, but the ones we did were big ones and some of those are onus, like the turnovers. They made a couple plays too, beat us to the net a couple times.<\/p>\n \u201cI thought Blackwood was exceptional, made big saves when we needed him.\u201d<\/p>\n The first goal came from MacKinnon, who fired a one-timer top shelf past rookie netminder Arsenii Sergeev. His ninth of the season was followed up with a rare top-unit power-play goal early in the second period from Necas. The Czechian forward tallied a one-timer from close to the net off a feed from Nazem Kadri with just 18 seconds remaining on the man advantage opportunity.<\/p>\n Necas\u2019 seventh of the season was also his seventh point in the last four games. <\/p>\n The Avs completed the trifecta of goals from its top line just over three minutes later, when Lehkonen grabbed a pass from Makar and wristed it past Sergeev. Lehkonen later added the fifth tally in the third period.<\/p>\n His 12 goals are tied for second in the NHL. The other four names that make up the top five are all big time goal scorers: Kirill Kaprizov (14), Leon Draisaitl (12), Auston Matthews (11), and Kyle Connor (11). It\u2019s quite the company to be a part of.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s got a good shot. He\u2019s smart, gets to the the dirty areas,\u201d Blackwood said of Lehkonen. \u201cHe knows where to go, and he\u2019s getting rewarded. He plays with some talented players to get him the puck. But credit to him, he knows where to go.\u201d<\/p>\n Before the second period was halfway through, Nelson redirected his fourth of the season out of mid-air on what started as a botched two-on-one with Gabe Landeskog that he still found a way to work with. <\/p>\n The Avs gave up one to Joel Farabee late in the second and to Martin Pospisil early in the third. <\/p>\n Good: Goals At Home<\/p>\n Nobody has scored more goals than the Colorado Avalanche at home. Heading into the New Jersey game, when things were looking rough for the Avs, I had highlighted that they were averaging exactly five goals per game at home through their first six outtings at Ball Arena. It was perfect timing to return after continuing to struggle on the road.<\/p>\n They put in five against the Devils to keep that pace, before adding another five against the Flames.<\/p>\n That puts them at 40 goals in eigh games at Ball Arena. Incredible stuff.<\/p>\n But again, like Bednar said, they need to find a way to do this on the road. Even if it\u2019s not five goals, they need to be better.<\/p>\n Bad: Calgary\u2019s Luck<\/p>\n Asisde from the fact that the Flames got zero help from the schedule makers with this game, the Flames were put in an even more brutal position with their goaltending when Devin Cooley got injured earlier in the week. Cooley was their biggest bright spot during their 6-2-0 run over the last eight games. <\/p>\n Colorado would\u2019ve still been a tough task with him in goal, but it would\u2019ve been a much better choice for the Flames then having to play an inexperienced rookie against a team that scores five per game at home on the second night of a back to back.<\/p>\n Before this game, Sergeev had one career start \u2014 a win \u2014 late last season against the Los Angeles Kings. And we all remember how nonexistent LA\u2019s offense was last year. Kudos to him for 28 saves against Colorado\u2019s offense and not letting the game go completely off the rails.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As expected, the Colorado Avalanche, on two days\u2019 rest, made easy work of the Calgary Flames on the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":954121,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194293],"tags":[199633,13156,18013,49,45339,2798,48,758,45347,82354,12362,454,25908,76227,6850,48001,8463],"class_list":["post-954120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-calgary","tag-artturi-lehkonen","tag-auston-matthews","tag-brock-nelson","tag-ca","tag-cale-makar","tag-calgary","tag-canada","tag-colorado-avalanche","tag-devon-toews","tag-gabriel-landeskog","tag-kirill-kaprizov","tag-kyle-connor","tag-leon-draisaitl","tag-mackenzie-blackwood","tag-martin-necas","tag-nathan-mackinnon","tag-nazem-kadri"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/954120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=954120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/954120\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/954121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=954120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=954120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=954120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}