DENVER — The year 2022 was a good one for Colorado. The Avalanche won their third Stanley Cup, Cale Makar won his first Norris Trophy, Mikko Rantanen had a triumphant Finnish homecoming and Nathan MacKinnon signed a long-term extension. The team finished the calendar year with a sterling 58-24-8 record.
The final days of the year, though, did not go well for Colorado. The Avalanche are on a three-game winless streak. They failed to capitalize against the lowly Coyotes on Tuesday, then blew a two-goal lead and lost to the Kings in a shootout Thursday. And on Saturday, the Maple Leafs trounced Colorado 6-2.
Let’s get into our weekly observations, which cover those three games. I have nine this week in honor of Evan Rodrigues’ jersey number.
1. Is it time for concern? My instinct is no. The Avalanche, with a 19-13-3 record, need to make sure two things happen before the end of the year: They get healthy and they make the playoffs. A high seed and home-ice advantage would help, but it’s not essential. Tampa Bay showed that last season, winning all three of its Eastern Conference series as the lower seed.
Colorado entered Sunday still in playoff position by point percentage (.586), but it’ll need to avoid extending this losing streak much further. The Golden Knights will be a tough test Monday, but then the team has a stretch of Vancouver, Edmonton, Florida, Chicago and Ottawa. None of those teams are pushovers aside from the Blackhawks, who are dreadful, but all are more than beatable.
Health, of course, remains the big question for Colorado. No one has been ruled out for the season, but this year’s rash of injuries is still a major concern. Darren Helm seems the closest of any injured player to a return to the lineup. He skated in a full-contact sweater at practice Friday.
“It’s player driven,” coach Jared Bednar said. “When he says he’s ready to play, then he’s ready to play.
2. MacKinnon being back in the lineup should help big time. When he’s come back from injury in the past, he usually has taken part of the first game to get back to his normal self. So now that his return game is out of the way, he should be in a good position going forward.
3. Funnily enough, MacKinnon also made a return from injury last season against the Maple Leafs, and that game was also a blowout loss for Colorado. The Avalanche lost 8-3 that night in Toronto.
4. Makar has played at an elite level this season. But he hasn’t been at the show-stopping, Cale Makar-elite level he played at in the 2021-22 campaign. But in a bright spot this week for Colorado, he showed his explosiveness against the Kings, logging three points in a three-minute span. In his main highlight of the night, he darted past Kevin Fiala to intercept a Mikey Anderson pass. He burst into the Kings’ zone, got past Anderson and shot around Drew Doughty and into the Los Angeles net.
Smooth like butter.#GoAvsGo pic.twitter.com/IFHAUW7xGH
— Colorado Avalanche (@Avalanche) December 30, 2022
“Loved him,” Bednar said when asked about his star defenseman’s game.
Makar has two goals and three assists in three games since the holiday break, and he almost scored an overtime winner against the Kings but couldn’t quite finish his own rebound. He’s on the outskirts of the Norris Trophy race but is plenty capable of making a second-half push for the award.
5. Makar has averaged at least a point per game in the past two seasons. This year he’s slightly below that pace, with 34 points in 35 games. Some of that likely has to do with playing alongside less-skilled players than he did last year. MacKinnon and Valeri Nichushkin have missed time, Gabriel Landeskog has yet to play this year and the likes of Andre Burakovsky and Nazem Kadri are gone in free agency. Not only does that mean he’s not on the ice with as good of finishers and passers, but it also means other teams can shade towards him more to try to take away his shooting chances because they don’t have to worry as much about the other skaters on the ice.
I also have to wonder if there’s a fatigue factor. Makar leads the NHL in ice time per game with 27:08, more than 30 seconds clear of the second-most used skater. Those minutes add up. It’s not as if there should be any major concerns with Makar — there hasn’t been any crazy regression — but these are trends to monitor.
6. Brad Hunt got called for a strange interference penalty against the Kings. An Andrew Cogliano chip was going over the bench, and Hunt whacked it back onto the ice with his stick.
“Just reactionary,” Hunt said afterward. “It’s interference. It is what it is. I didn’t know that was a penalty, but it is. We learn from it. Obviously I didn’t mean any harm by it.”
Added Bednar: “News to me, but if that’s the rule, that’s the rule.”
7. The Sam Girard-Erik Johnson pairing was on the ice for both of the Kings’ five-on-five goals, but Bednar blamed poor forward play more than his two defensemen.
Asked Bednar if he’d consider splitting up the Girard-Johnson pair. He said no and reiterated that he pinned both 5v5 goals against last night #Avs forwards. He said those F lapses — letting the Kings skate through untouched — led to the defensemen having bad gaps. pic.twitter.com/VorBapTlBq
— Peter Baugh (@Peter_Baugh) December 30, 2022
8. Rantanen, arguably the Avalanche’s most valuable player through 35 games, had what looked like one of his best goals of the year against the Coyotes. He whacked his own rebound out of midair and into the net. Unfortunately for the Finn, the goal got called back for offside because Makar didn’t have possession of the puck entering the offensive zone.
9. A pair of former Avalanche players made their first returns to Denver with the Leafs on Saturday: forward Dryden Hunt and defenseman Conor Timmins.
Hunt went to Toronto in the Dennis Malgin trade earlier this month. Timmins, meanwhile, went to Arizona in the Darcy Kuemper deal, then was traded to Toronto earlier this season. A high second-round pick in the 2017 draft, he’s settled into a nice role with the Maple Leafs and has eight points in 13 games.
In case you missed it…
• As Avalanche’s historic 2022 comes to a close, a look back
• Evaluating Avalanche team-building through the draft: Revisiting the 2011-20 classes (Peter Baugh and Scott Wheeler)
• Mikko Rantanen, Finland’s brightest star, keeps the decimated Avalanche afloat
• Nathan MacKinnon’s return, Alexandar Georgiev’s tough night, more Avs-Leafs takeaways
(Photo of Cale Makar: Harrison Barden/Getty Images)
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