The bye week and All-Star break are finally in the rearview mirror and after 11 days we finally got to see the Avs back on the ice. The game against the Flyers on Saturday night was a tough pill to swallow. I think Bednar summed it up best when he said, “I did feel like we deserved better at times in the game, and then at the end of it, we gave up six. It doesn’t matter how they get them. It’s just like, we were two steps away. We get to one and then we fall back again. I’ve said all along, I am not going to judge our teams on the wins and losses.” (Quote from Ryan Clark of the Athletic).
The Avs started the game looking incredibly solid, they certainly didn’t seem like a team that had just had a week and a half off, and yet they found themselves down 2-0 at the end of the period. The first goal can be chalked up to bad puck luck, but the second goal is much more upsetting. Kevin Hayes tipped a shot from the point in at an improbable angle. The tip itself was wildly impressive, but it came while the Avs were on the PK. That’s where the problem lies, for the remainder of the game the PK put together a hell of a performance, but yet again couldn’t keep an opposition PP off the score sheet.
Nazem Kadri summed it well saying, “I think the part is we’re a little bit inconsistent. Sometimes we’re on fire, and other times we look (like) trash out there. It’s just about finding that balance, and, obviously, besides that short-handed goal, our power play and PK was pretty good today.” (Quote from Ryan Clark of the Athletic).
The keyword in that quote being inconsistent. Its the exact word I used in the previous “Snow Report” blog. It has been this team’s biggest problem all season long, and unfortunately, it seems to have carried over from the break.
In the second period, the Avs seemed to right the ship a little bit when they closed the deficit to one goal. A seeing-eye shot from Zadorov found its way into the back of the net early but was almost immediately countered by the Flyers. Shortly after that the power play and Mikko Rantanen seemed to get their legs back underneath them when Mikkos one-timer from his office rippled the net. At the end of the second, it looked like the Avs had found a bit of a rhythm in the game and were poised for a potential comeback. That, however, was not the case.
The third period was a real nightmare. Farabee and Burakovsky traded goals at about the halfway point, but it was all downhill from there. This was highlighted by the aforementioned short-handed goal that pushed the Flyers lead to two, and pretty much put the game to bed. The Flyers added an empty netter to add insult to injury and push the final score to a gaudy 6-3 loss for the Avs.
This game was almost a microcosm of the first half and some change of the season. The special teams were almost good enough to get the win but were a massive let down in the biggest moments of the game. The game itself seemed very much within reach, but the effort simply wasn’t consistent enough. Hopefully, the remainder of this road trip gives them time to work through the kinks and start playing the way they did for the first month of the season. Until then it seems like the snow is just gonna be a little bit inconsistent. See ya next Monday with another Snow Report.
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The Snow Report 