In a brutal showing tonight where nothing seemed to go right, the Colorado Avalanche got absolutely stomped by the Pittsburgh Penguins by a final score of 7-2. After a lackluster showing in Winnipeg this wasn’t the homecoming Colorado wanted in their return to Ball Arena.
Let’s look at all the action from tonight.
First Period
Before ESPN could even broadcast the game as three goals were scored within the opening five minutes. First Evgeni Malkin would get the Penguins on the board first with just an insane backhand
shot, which didn’t look all that dangerous to begin with, but Scott Wedgewood was caught off guard by it, and it was 1-0 Penguins three minutes into the first period.
One minute later Colorado responded as Nathan MacKinnon would get his 45th goal of the year next, tying the game at 1-1, off a beautiful feed from Martin Necas, who was able to break into the zone on his own and find MacKinnon all alone in the slot.
That satisfaction only lasted 23 seconds before Anthony Mantha would score next and give Pittsburgh the lead back, as he managed to get into the Avs’ zone all alone and scored on the breakaway.
Malkin would tack on his second goal of the night next and make it 3-1 Penguins. No Colorado player was able to puck him up in the slot, and he made no mistake burying the puck from right in front of the net. Scott Wedgewood’s night was done after this goal as it wasn’t his best showing but the defense and coverage wasn’t doing him any favors. Bednar likes to change up the goalies in hopes of finding a spark for his team.
And that spark with Mackenzie Blackwood in net lasted all of 43 seconds before Elmer Soderblom would make it 4-1 in Pittsburgh’s favor after that, leaving Colorado searching for answers.
A sign of life emerged as Colorado would get one back before the period ended, however, as Brent Burns made it 4-2 , as he was able to let a shot rip from the blue line, which ended up beating Silovs and gave Colorado a glimmer of hope going into the first intermission. Gavin Brindley was briefly freed from the fourth line and earned the primary assist on this play but that didn’t buy him any more opportunity for the rest of the game.
Second Period
By the midpoint of the second period things weren’t going much better and Erik Karlsson would make it 5-2 Penguins about halfway through the second frame, as he fired a puck from the blue line, and it deflected off a player in front of the net and in.
Bryan Rust would then make it 6-2 on, stop me if you’ve heard this one before, a breakaway goal on the power play, and the Avs would be down by four goals heading into the third period.
Third Period
It was all over by this point as both teams were eager to wrap things up. There was a brief tussle between Jack Drury and Connor Clifton after Noel Acciari scored the seventh and final goal for the Penguins about halfway through the third, for the 7-2 final.
Takeaways
Well, the good news is Colorado didn’t lose the three-point lead they had on Dallas for the division lead, as the Stars also lost tonight against the Utah Mammoth. The bad news is, your game on Wednesday now matters a thousand times more than it did already after this showing. Especially after the loss to Winnipeg, where Colorado played well but just could not finish to save their lives, you hoped that they would play well tonight as well and carry some of that momentum over from the Winnipeg game. Unfortunately, that’s not what happened in this game, obviously. The Avs ended up down 4-1 in the first period before Burns scored Colorado’s second goal of the night, and were never able to recover after that deficit. As stated earlier, you didn’t lose your lead on Dallas for the division, as they also lost tonight, so that’s all well and good, but again, this outcome makes Wednesday’s game against the Stars matter so much more than it already did, and it already mattered quite a bit. Hopefully, the Avs head into that game motivated after tonight’s showing and get both points out of that game.
Upcoming
The Dallas Stars come to Denver on Wednesday night for a massive Central Division matchup. Puck drop is at 7:30 p.m. MT nationally televised on TNT.
