Breaking Down: Avs/Flyers, Game 13

Last night’s game vs Philly was the most entertaining of the season so far and even a shootout couldn’t put a damper on it. They ended up lucking out when Mikko Rantanen scored in the final round and now sit at 8-5, 3rd in the Central and 12th overall in the NHL.

Team Stats

The Avs got outshot 37-27 overall and 28-21 at even strength. FWIW they are now last in the NHL for shot share or percentage of 5v5 shots taken. That’s not great but the Carolina Corsi Heroes have kinda blown that stat for us for a while.

Once again the Avs shot attempts failed to keep up with the opponent. This has been a trend for the last 5 or 6 games now and is reaching the level of concern. The defense hasn’t been great and we still have more questions than answers with both Zadorov and Bigras going through 3 game benchings recently. Add the absence of JT Compher and to a lesser extent Tyson Jost and I’d characterize the Avs recent success as just scraping by.

Not pretty but it comes down to the beginning of the 2nd period when the Flyer came out flying and the Avs took 10 minutes to figure out we were going wide open for the rest of the game. After that it was relatively even and extremely fun to watch. Final CF were +36/-48 or 43%.

TOI

Matt Duchene had one of his best games of the season and led forwards in time on ice 5v5 and 3rd in all situations. He double shifted a lot with the orphaned 4th liners Kerf & Greer. Landy/Mack/Mikko was the complete line that had most TOI 5v5, all around 15 minutes or so. Kerf & Greer brought up the rear predictably.

With 7 defensemen dressed we saw a lot of different combinations but the same guys at the top. EJ led at 5v5 (18:49) and overall (28:28) with Barrie a distant 2nd (17:03/21:39). Big Z was 3rd 5v5 but trailed Nemeth overall thanks to massive PK time. After his brief tryout on the top pair, Anton Lindholm is back in his more familiar 6th spot. Miro was last with 8:53 and that was probably too much.

Individuals

– Shoutout to Sven, Yak and Lindy for being the only players with positive shot differential.

– Blake Comeau scored for the 2nd game in a row and has 5 points in his last 5 games

– Mack had 2 assists and Mikko had a goal plus the shootout winner. Both have 12 points in 13 games now to lead the club. That’s hot.

– Varly’s numbers aren’t impressive overall but he’s keeping the Avs in games despite seeing an average of 35 shots against every night. The last 2 games against the Canes and Flyers he’s stopped 90/97 for a .928 Sv% and 2 wins

Burgundy Narrative Metric

– “Best guys being your best guys” gets a (+) Dutch finally showed up again and everyone else had a helluva game
– Corsi gets a (-) thanks to getting smoked for 10 minutes in the 2nd
– Power Play gets a (+) 2 goals in 3 tries, outstanding!
– Turtle gets an (even) because it was firewagon all the way
– Varly% gets a (+) but he didn’t steal this one
– Referee Oppression Index gets an (even) but Miro’s phantom trip in the 3rd makes this faintly negative