Homestand Part VI: Hitting a Wall

The Colorado Avalanche got back on the winning track with the big win over the Washington Capitals on MLK Day, with that win coming after our first home regulation loss to the Nashville Predators. Regarding this, our sixth game of our seven-game homestand, the team formerly known as Les Nordiques welcomed Les Canards, the Ducks, to Ball Arena. This was the second meeting between the Avs and Ducks, and the last meeting was also in Denver, we still have a trip to SoCal coming in this set.

In net, we had Scott Wedgewood, while the Ducks had Lukas Dostal. Oh boy. First period was quiet, but only from the Ducks. We were firing on all cylinders but nothing from the Ducks, yet it was scoreless after 20. Early i the 2nd period, Jeffrey Viel put it in for Anaheim, and it was 1-0 for the Ducks, with Dostal still stopping things from us. He's doing that thing again, folks. Lukas Dostal has done this too many times to count. I've seen many of his starts where Dostal will stop literally everything his way while the Ducks can't piece two shots together. Win or lose, Dostal will have about 40, maybe 50 saves. It reminds me so much of Darcy Kuemper doing this for the Coyotes before he became our Cup-winning goalie in 2022.

So yeah, despite the fact that we had a near 2-1 shots advantage, it was 1-0 Ducks after 40. The goalie-ing was continuing into the third, and we were in danger of actually being shut out. With five minutes remaining, we still had nothing, and Nathan MacKinnon had a great shot stopped by the Great Wall of Dostal. Finally, after 56 minutes and 21 seconds of game time, Artturi Lehkonen ties the game and kills Dostal's shutout bid. Leave it to Lehky to score at the right time, he definitely is a mix between Milan Hejduk and Alex Tanguay. The assists went to Brock Nelson and Brent Burns. Game ended up going to overtime, but a shootout would be needed. The shootout saw goals from Mikael Granlund (a former division foe who played for the Predators and Wild) and Cutter Gauthier, but a funny thing happened: Dostal had no clue. Dostal was shown shaking his head and telling his teammates they shouldn't be on the ice, but he ended up learning that Gauthier's shot did go in.

So for the ninth time this season, we lose past regulation. We are among many teams this season who are really cashing in on those one point losses. As an Avs fan, I can't help but find this funny. We've lost 14 games, which isn't that much, but nine of them were past regulation. Now, the pessimist can say, "That's nine points lost." That's true, though. However, the optimist can say, "That's nine bonus points." Also true. Even so, the fourth period and the shootout remain on our small list of weaknesses for this season, but even so, we remain the top team in the league by quite a bit.

The Avalanche's seven-game homestand concludes on Friday against the Philadelphia Flyers. If we win this, we'll finish 4-1-2 in this homestand; pretty wonky, yes, but that seems to the way we do things this season. After that, it's a four-game road trip that will begin on Sunday in Toronto--the same day that the Denver Broncos will host the AFC Championship.

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