Marty Necas has AURA | Avalanche Review Game 61

0:00Apparently, just the vibes of Nazum Kadri being back on the team solve a number of the Aves problems. Aves win over the Dallas stars 5-4 in the shootout. In what has to be one of the most eventful regular season days ever in Avalanche history, that was a crazy hockey game. The madness of Kadri being acquired right at the buzzer of the trade deadline was already enough excitement for the day. But then the Aves go play a really messy hockey game that they're able to figure it out. And in a lot of ways, they are able to solve this game backwards as to what you would normally expect out of the Aves. For a significant portion of this game, the Aves were frankly no good at 5 on 5. Obviously, that's not normal, and it's nothing to really worry about long term, but within this game, particularly in the own zone, the Aves were bad. Where the Aves were great is the power play. And that gets them on the board first early. Kill McCarr, scoring on the power play against Jake Atenger. Interesting. Apparently he can do that. Very fun to watch, very well put

1:02together power play, and really nice to see the Aves maybe get that monkey off their back against a team like Dallas, particularly Kale against Atenger. While this did set the Aves up for success, the rest of the first period was going to be painful. A few minutes later, a power play back the other way, evens the score. Somewhat similar to their own goal, the Aves peaking on Dallas here, and they get caught a little bit deep in their zone. You do have to respect the puck carrier, but Parker Kelly is supposed to be the high forward here, and has just essentially a band in post, which leaves a good around a amount of room for Hayskin to work with. Nowhere near, what McCarr gets to step into on the previous goal. And this is decently defended. You have guys marked up pretty well. It's just you put yourself in front of your own goalie, and there's a screen, and then it bounces off to Devon Taves. Oops, nothing's perfect here. Sometimes weird pucks bounce and go in. You live with it. Well, I understand that's a funny deflection and a goal that I'm absolutely willing to chalk up to a bit of silliness. The Aves penalty kill continues

2:02to trend in the wrong direction. It's something that they've got to start locking down better. The Aves power play is finally starting to turn the corner. You don't want it to be meaningless because your PK is bad now. Part of that conversation is discipline. The Aves took four penalties in this one. One of them a too many men. One of them coming from Josh Manson again. You have to clean it up. They had that nice game the other day where they only take one penalty, but that is the odd one out post Olympic break. They continually take too many. Thankfully, that was the only one Dallas scored on, so it's not that bad, but still clean it up. Unfortunately, the Aves just kind of fall apart at five on five through the rest of the first, and particularly their depth struggles. Now to be fair, their depth is in a tough spot in this game. Victor Olisson no longer in the lineup because he was part of the Cadre trade. Nick Wah in the lineup, but playing his first game for the Aves, so you expect some adjustment time there. You have to just manage things, and you're trying to play a game where your third and fourth lines don't hurt you. Unfortunately, that's exactly what they do. Aves fourth line chasing badly in their own zone. They've already failed to clear it once or twice,

3:07and are just stuck behind the play pretty consistently here. You see the puck go into the corner here, and the Aves kind of chase it. And Bartikov gets stuck half in, not willing to commit to the puck battle, and half out, not really defending anything as he twirls up into the circle. As the Aves lose that puck battle, he's no real urgency here to get his head back around and recognize what's going on. So by the time he does turn and recognize the guy that's supposed to be his man is cutting through the middle of the ice, he's put himself in an awkward spot. He tries to adjust, but just kind of flails as Wyatt Johnson gets to a nice spot, and that's a guy who murders the Aves. That's a great shot. I think that play right there sums up why Zikar Bartikov is not going to be in the Aves line up, come play off time. The Aves are trying to win a Stanley Cup in the next three months. They don't have time to wait for that development. I also don't want to harp on him too much because there are a lot of dudes that were just downright awful for the Aves in their own zone, including their entire D-Core, and also including Mackenzie Blackwood, who is directly at fault for everything

4:10on Dallas' third goal. Very little to break down on this play, Dallas is ultimately going to dump this puck in. The Blackwood goes back behind his net to settle it. Aves is coming in, expecting him to settle it. Nothing weird about this play at all. There's no rush, they have time. Instead of Aves saying something to Blackwood, or Blackwood looking at his surroundings at all, Blackwood just fires this puck right into Taves legs. No, don't do that. Bad. From that situation, Blackwood completely panics for no apparent reason on a shot that wasn't even going on net. This panic causes him to lose his stick, completely lose control of himself in his own crease, and the puck coming across to another star means Blackwood has no chance to recover. Yikes. Look, is some of that on Devon Taves. He needs to be communicating he's coming in to collect that puck from Blackwood. Yeah, for sure. But also, Blackwood needs to use his eyeballs. He needs to look up and see Taves coming. He needs to recognize what is happening around him and not just blindly shoot a puck up

5:14the boards. Blackwood has not been a very good puck manager all season outside of the crease, and at this point you might as well chain him to the posts. Do not leave that crease area anymore. Blackwood, because you're not helping your team. So you've turned what was a good start into a very bad period, and you're still able to keep it close. Again, thanks to the power play. This is weird. 13 seconds left in the period, the abs get a power play. I will say abs were fantastic in the offensive zone face off dot today. They did a great job there. They get a setup off of this one. Nature's down to McKinnon from a tough angle. McKinnon ultimately more of a slip pass because it was a tough pass to take through to the middle there, but they reset. They reloaded again and a better pass from Nages allows McKinnon to get the shot off. A shooting power play is a good power play. You will finish some when you do shoot. These are the types of goals that I think the abs power play has struggled to score. Not the last second craziness, but plays that aren't necessarily the highest danger have virtually not gone in at all this season for the avalanche. Some of that

6:20is on a play like this. The abs are willing to shoot the puck. Nathan McKinnon just firing away until one eventually goes in, but I also think some of that is just normal variance. The abs have gotten pretty unlucky over a long stretch of this year with their power play. Some of that definitely deserved. I'm not trying to argue that, but if pucks like that start going in a little bit more consistently for Colorado, their power play is going to get fixed in a hurry. Also, you know, Marty Nages is the best player in the NHL post-alybic break, but we'll get to that in a second. Dallas playing with a lead is certainly a tough nut to crack, so it's important that the abs kept it within one at the end of the first. Unfortunately, early in the second, the defensive issues just continued. Dallas dumping a puck through the neutral zone. There's a puck battle there involving Brent Burns, and Burns ultimately loses this battle. I don't mind this step up. I don't mind this play from Brent Burns, and Brent Burns even has a decent excuse here. I don't think it should count as an excuse, but I did just want to show you this. As the puck is going up the ice, Brent Burns is going to take a cross-check right to the numbers that goes uncalled.

7:21You do need a better job from the rest, because that does have a pretty significant impact on this play. You probably would like a call there. Again, no excuse. Brent Burns has to find a way to get back up and get himself back in this play. I'm sure it didn't feel good, but you go down to the ice, you get back up, and you go play defense. Now, far from the only issue in this play, this puck has to be played effectively by Josh Manson. He's coming in to play it, and then he bales out to try and play the physical game, and just loses the physical battle. Gets out, muscled, outworked, and now you're in chaos. You probably wanted a better job from the Ab's forward, someone taking the net front area, but ultimately they're expecting Brent Burns to be back in doing that, but Burns is nowhere in this play. Yes, he did get knocked down. Yes, there was that cross-check in the neutral zone. If this is his top speed, you're in big trouble. He's coasting back into the play as Jamie Ben is finishing a puck net front because he's just nowhere in it. The Josh Manson Brent Burns pairing was unplayable in this one again.

8:22We know they have ups and downs, and I know they'll get it back together, but when it looks like this, it's just rough. Manson clearly needs to use his strength to do a better job of controlling that puck behind the net, but Brent Burns cannot fall over in the neutral zone and just completely give up on this play, and there was a bigger problem across the course of this game for Brent Burns. The Ab's came into this game on two days rest. You should be able to get refreshed and ready to go, and Brent Burns from most of this game looked like he was playing his third game in three days. He had absolutely no legs. People were regularly skating around him like he was not even there. There's definitely a bit of a reason for concern that Brent Burns is going to look like that after two days of rest. Now, I am willing to say, hey, you had an off day, you move on to the next one, you can move forward and he'll be fine. I am sure he will play better than what he did in this game going forward. However, if we see these issues start to crop up more, you seriously need to consider at least giving him some rest games. You have Nick Blankenberg

9:22right there now. I know they bring different things to the lineup to some extent, but you need the good version of Brent Burns when the playoffs get here, so you cannot let it look like that, you need to do what you have to do to fix it. That would be the last goal of the game for Dallas, and also the last goal of the game given up from Mackenzie Blackwood. Scott Wedgewood comes in from there, understandably. While some of those goals are not Blackwood's fault at all, you just can't give up four goals on 11 shots. You need to do better than that. Dallas is a team that likes to play from ahead and likes to completely clog up the game, and that's exactly what they would do from that point on. And while large portions of the abs lineup was struggling, their best players were not. They get it back to within one again in the second period. A very smooth breakout and entry from the abs here with Gabe Landiscock being the puck carrier on that top line. Not the usual setup there. Landy is able to draw basically the entire Dallas team to him in the middle. It's a little bit sketchy, but he's able to get it to McKinnon who makes a nice read. I don't think we've seen enough of that from the abs this year, or a puck gets into a little bit of danger,

10:24and they step up and help the puck carrier. McKinnon then takes that central area, and a really nice job by nature is to take the space deep in the zone. You know, McKinnon's going to try and flick a puck through a stick, as he almost always does with these types of things. When they do get through, you got to be ready and in position for them. Nature's is, and then he finishes it beautifully too. Marty Nature's now has 14 points in the six games post-elympic break. That's the type of run that very few players in the NHL are even capable of. In tonight's game, he would be involved in literally every single goal that was scored, including scoring the shootout winner, and he's found a foothold that is not only making himself better, but is making everyone around him better. Now, I'm not delusional. I understand that Nathan McKinnon is the better player on that line and on the avalanche, but there are nights where maybe McKinnon doesn't have it going just right, or things are a little bit off. And instead of that just being a problem for the avalanche, Marty Nature's has stepped up and filled that gap, and either done it himself, or helped get Nathan McKinnon going again. McKinnon, by the way, had three points in this game himself,

11:28not too shabby, but Nature's is the guy that really has been doing it for the abs post-elympic break. I don't know that I'm ever a real believer in the idea of a regular season game having a playoff atmosphere. You can see intensity be higher and lower, maybe depending on matchups in situation, but I just don't think there's any real replacement for NHL playoffs. But if you want to call this one a playoff atmosphere, it has to give you confidence that Nature's is going to be able to perform in those areas, right? So that reduces the lead back to one, and the abs really have to grind this one out. Both teams take turns trading penalties in the third period. The abs have a very bad situation that I mentioned earlier, where it ended up being like 20 seconds of 5 on 3 time for Dallas, but they're able to survive that. They also fail to score on other powerplay opportunities for themselves, which they go 2 for 5 on the night. You just cannot be upset with that, especially given the abs powerplay 40% is the best it's been in a long time. And frankly, the abs are probably supposed to lose this game. No one's going to sit here and tell you the abs played well for the majority of this game. At least outside the powerplay, they certainly

12:32did not. But when the abs are at their best this year, they're never out of the game. They keep working, they keep trying things, they keep finding opportunities, and more often than not this year, they've been able to crack their opponents. And it takes until the last 13 seconds of the game, but number 13 scores his 13th of the season to tie it. Crunch time, empty net, abs dump in a puck, they're able to get to it, get it back to the near corner, and then Dallas gives them a weird amount of space here. I know it's a 6 on 5, but you would really expect someone to challenge Brock Nelson in the corner a little bit, try and seal a puck and just end this game. Nelson takes his time with the space and when he finally is challenged, he's able to just do enough to get this to natious, who quickly, I know you can't see it in the corner, but finds the open guy. The abs have done a better job of finding the open guy, post-Olympic break. It's Nechushkin, not from the greatest spot ever, but with enough room to get a shot off. And when you put the perfect shot on net, sometimes you score. The abs have desperately needed that second line production at times this year. Your superstars are great, but sometimes they just need a little bit

13:35of help. Finally, Nechushkin is able to put one in the back of the net. It comes in a huge moment and a great time to see him get rewarded in a game where frankly he played very, very well. A massive goal for the abs, they get one point out of this game, so worst-case scenario, they are at least keeping pace with Dallas to fend them off at the top of the central. And I'll be honest, I was content here. One point out of that game, the way that it played out, was enough for me. It was not enough for the abs though. Over time was over time the typical modern 3 on 3. There are a couple of high-danger chances that had some nice saves on them, but not the super-octane craziness that it used to be. We get through that, and frankly, a lot of teams against the abs are content to play for the shootout, given how much they've struggled in that area this season, but this shootout was different. Can't show you the whole thing, because I'm pretty sure they will absolutely copyright me into oblivion if I do that, but there is a couple of unbelievable saves from Scott Wedgewood that you can see clips of here, both of them. A plus stuff from Wedgewood. And then both of the abs shooters score with moves that,

14:40frankly, at least in a Chushkin's case, I certainly have not seen him pull off before. With a shootout like that, it's baffling that the abs are so good at losing them, but it ultimately gets them the second point in this game, and the abs come away with a fantastic day. Again, no one's going to tell you the abs played well for the majority of that game, but they did win, and finding ways to win is what you have to do, especially in the playoffs. You're not going to bring your A-game every single day, and you still have to make it work. And, you know, adding nasimcadry to the lineup will probably help with that. Colorado moves to seven points ahead of Dallas with a game in hand. Dallas has exactly 20 games left in their season. The abs continue to be in the driver's seat. But a really fun year to be an avalanche fan, and yesterday has to probably be the peak so far. That is the end of this game video review. Thank you for watching. I am Rudo, and nas is back.