Missed it by THAT Much

The Colorado Avalanche are one of the hottest teams in the league, having quite an amazing and impressive month of March. We entered Saturday afternoon coming off a huge shutout win over the Los Angeles Kings. The homestand continued on against the St. Louis Blues, who entered this meeting winning eight straight games and not knowing how to have a cool down. I am dead serious. Nobody expected the Blues to do, well, this. They tore it down about two years ago, yet here they are, above the playoff line, capitalizing from the faltering of the Canucks and Flames.

In this go-around, it was Mackenzie Blackwood against Jordan Binnington. It was a quiet period for the most part, and there was only one penalty. Unfortunately, it was against us. Jack Drury commits a Delay of Game infraction--puck over the glass. Blues get the first power play, and it's successful. Zack Bolduc makes it 1-0 for St. Louis, but barely over a minute later, Nathan MacKinnon ties it up. 30th goal of the season, with Devon Toews with the only assist. The 1-1 score held up after 20 minutes, and the 2nd period had some close calls on both sides. We get our first power play of the game. It gets killed off. Even worse, it's our only PP of the game. It really shouldn't have been. We should have had more.

Still 1-1 after 40 minutes, but early in the 3rd, they call Ross Colton for interference. Thankfully that PP gets killed off, but 30 seconds later, they put MacKinnon in the box for tripping Radek Faksa. One problem: Faksa was tripped by his own damn stick! I am so sick and tired of the refs' bias against MacKinnon, and sadly, Mack can't say a word about it, because he's the only one in the league who gets called for Unsportsmanlike Conduct when he rightfully tells the refs how fucking stupid and biased they are. The power play was killed off, but shortly after the kill, Pavel Buchnevich gives the Blues the lead back. And after that, St. Louis gets yet another power play. Yet these same refs saw one of our players on the receiving end of a dirty hit, and they swallow their whistles. Refs hate the Avs so fucking much. So we kill this off, but the score continues to hold. Blackwood's pulled for the extra attacker, and we really shoot and control the puck, but it ends with a potential buzzer beater being stopped by Binnington, who chooses now to go back to 2019.

This was a tough home loss; it was half refs being in St. Louis' corner for the whole game, and half Jordan Binnington deciding to turn back the clock to 2019, where he was a brick wall who could have won the Conn Smythe Trophy. So for St. Louis, that's nine straight wins, and the Avs receive only our second regulation loss this month. What really sucks is that we can't afford to lose any points because Dallas doesn't know how to lose games in regulation. The Avs are now seven points behind Dallas for second place. Home ice in this likely playoff series would be nice, but one has to wonder: do we actually need it?

The Avs will end the homestand, and the month of March, against the Calgary Flames on Monday. After that, it's a three game road trip in Chicago (Wednesday), Columbus (Thursday), and St. Louis (Saturday).

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