TAMPA, Fla. — In a season where nearly everything has gone right, even the time when it’s gone worst might not be as bad as it seems for the Colorado Avalanche.
The Avs got swept out of the Sunshine State, doubling the number of regulation losses they’ve had this season in a span of 48 hours. Two of the most important players on the team were injured in back-to-back games after scary collisions with inanimate on-ice objects, and both are now considered week-to-week.
And yet, there are a couple of silver linings, relatively speaking, for the Avs. To start with, Colorado just played what are likely the three best teams in the Eastern Conference in four days. Even with the injuries to Gabe Landeskog and Devon Toews, the Avalanche came back to beat Carolina and then lost two close games to Florida and Tampa Bay.
“You’ve got to take some of the positives out of this trip,” Avs defenseman Cale Makar said. “I felt like overall, we were there for the most part going into the third of both games. Just a couple of bad bounces in unfortunate spots.”
Florida and Tampa Bay have both been dealing with serious injury issues all season. Both clubs were missing star-level talent as well. But the shock of losing Landeskog and Toews was still fresh, and the Avs had to ask goalie Scott Wedgewood to start three games in four days because Mackenzie Blackwood is the other integral player missing from the lineup.
Even then, the Avs outshot all three teams, created 52.8% of the expected goals and scoring chances at 5-on-5, plus more than 57% of the high-danger chances, per Natural Stat Trick. If this was “bad” for this Avalanche team, there’s plenty of reason to believe the winning ways will return in short order.
“Regardless of the circumstances, who’s in and out of the lineup, you are going to face that at different times during the year,” Avs coach Jared Bednar said. “I think our team’s done that and handled that pretty well this year, even though we haven’t had some of our top guys go out due to injury. Now they are.
“They’re important guys for us, but you still have to prepare yourself the same way and go and carry out your business the same way for the guys that are in the lineup. I thought we played hard and we competed hard.”
While that felt like a very tough long weekend for the Avs, they actually gained ground on their closest rivals in both the Central Division and NHL standings. When the Avs landed in North Carolina, they had a 10-point lead on the Dallas Stars for second in the division and the league standings.
When it was wheels down back in Denver early Wednesday morning, that lead had grown to 11 points. The Stars have now lost six straight games (0-3-3) after getting battered Tuesday night by those same Hurricanes that Colorado stormed back against three days prior.
And if there was a spot in the schedule to not have 2-3 impact guys available, the next stretch is it. Colorado will play its next seven games at Ball Arena. The Avs are 17-0-2 at the friendly confines this season — no other NHL club has lost fewer than seven times at home. Buffalo is next best at 13-5-2.
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None of those clubs is coming to Denver in the next 15 days. Five of the seven who are set to play the Avalanche in Denver were on the outside looking in at the playoff picture on Wednesday morning. Meanwhile, the Stars’ next five contests are on the road.
It’d be hard to draw up a better time for the Avs to retreat to the Front Range, regroup and fortify their lead atop the NHL standings while they wait for Toews and Landeskog to heal.
“Yeah, we made a couple mistakes, but we also did a bunch of good things as well,” Bednar said. “When you come up a little bit short, you’ve got to regroup and get ready to do the same thing again. Our team’s been doing that. That’s first and foremost what I judge our team on. We feel like if we kind of stick to that process, then we’ll get the results we want.”
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