Recap: Colorado falls completely flat in 5-2 loss against Ottawa

SB Nation

After winning against the Toronto Maple Leafs on the back of a Brock Nelson hat-trick on Sunday, the Colorado Avalanche continued their road trip today as they took on the Ottawa Senators, in which they lost

by a final score of 5-2.

Let’s take a look back at the action from tonight.

First Period

Neither team would end up scoring in this period. The Senators came out with a ton of momentum and sustained it throughout the entirety of this period, as it seemed like the Avs couldn’t spend any time in the offensive zone whatsoever. In fact, Colorado ended up being outshot by 14-4 during this period.

Second Period

After a scoreless first period, the Senators would be the ones to get on the board first, as Nick Cousins would get into the Avalanhe zone behind the defnese, and managed to get a puck to trickle past Mackenzie Blackwood to make it 1-0 Ottawa.

Parker Kelly would answer back for the Avs as they hit 10 shots on goal, making the Sens pay for a bad turnover in their own zone, as he was able to jump on a free puck and beat James Reimer cleanly to tie this game at 1-1.

Not even a minute after Colorado found the equalizer, they surrendered another goal to Ottawa, as Ridly Greig chased a puck into the Avs’ zone, and managed to take advantage of Blackwood’s misplaying the puck.

Third Period

In a period you wanted to see Colorado come out blazing to try and tie this game up again, they did the exact opposite and instead surrendered a goal to Claude Giroux into the early bit of the third, making it 3-1 Ottawa.

Valeri Nichushkin would make things interesting shortly after the Giroux goal, as Artturi Lehkonen found him down low in front of the net, and Nichushkin put a backhand shot home against Reimer, making it 3-2 for his first goal of 2026.

Despite that hint of momentum, the Avs wouldn’t be able to tie the game with the goaltender pulled, and would give up two more garbage-time goals, one to Brady Tkachuk and one to Tim Stützle, both of which were empty-net goals, for a final score of 5-2.

Takeaways

As we are getting ever closer to the NHL Olympic break, it makes sense that this team might be thinking ahead to the time off and tournament, but it’s not an excuse to not at least try and finish out this part of the season strong, in my opinion. To put it in a word, the effort in this game was frustrating to watch, to say the least. As written earlier, it seemed like every time you got possession of the puck in the first and a lot of the second period, for that matter, you immediately turned it over, and the puck was right back into your own zone. Obviously, it’s incredibly hard to win games if you can’t even possess it in the offensive zone, and even when you can possess it in the offensive zone, it’s really hard to win games if you’re not shooting the puck on net effectively. You have a quick turnaround tomorrow, so hopefully the Avs are able to forget about this game and get right against the Canadiens quickly.