Scott Wedgewood Is A Wizard | Avalanche Review Game 19

Scott Wedgewood Is A Wizard | Avalanche Review Game 19

There are no teams this season that have scored more goals than the Colorado Avalanche. But also, there are no teams this season who have given up fewer goals than the Colorado Avalanche. ABS win 4 to1 over the New York Islanders. This is the eighth time this season that the ABS have given up only one goal to their opponents through 19 games. On some nights, that’s incredibly highquality defense not giving up any dangerous opportunities. On some nights, like tonight, that’s your goalender balling out. Scott Wedgwood played great and was by far the AB’s best player in this game. Not even remotely close. The Islanders are not a particularly good offensive team and struggled to generate too many dangerous chances at five on five with only nine in the game, which was still more than the ABS generated, but that wasn’t that crazy. But really, it was on the penalty kill where Wedgewood made multiple fantastic saves for the ABS and just would not budge on this one and never let New York really have a chance to win. I say that, but the New York Islanders did win the first period of this game. In fact, they led this game for over 20 minutes, scoring the first goal of the game just about two minutes in. Not much to say about the setup here. The ABS do lose the faceoff. It’s not a great faceoff win, but ABS just not able to win the race to this puck, which allows the Islanders to get possession. Initially, this is pretty well defended. You’re going to have Burns taking the guy to the middle. We’ve got men marked all over the place here. You’re going to have to do a little bit of a slide play to make sure you get the fifth man covered up high for New York. But none of that’s going to matter because D’Angelo is just going to throw a puck into the slot here and hope for the best. Again, this is pretty good defense from Burns. He has the stick tied up. This really shouldn’t be that dangerous of a play. Unless, of course, you’re allowed to kick a puck and then it’s in the back of your net. Not really sure what you want the ABS to do better there. Win the faceoff. I guess the goal itself is a bit silly. Look, I’m on team. Pretty much all goals should count. So, I’m cool with it. But we have yet another rule which has stupid nonsensical stuff going on here. Did Heinaman kick that puck? Maybe not. Maybe the redirection was what happened when the puck actually made contact with his skate. But Heinman absolutely kicked. There was a clear kicking motion. It just happened before the puck got there. In a world where that rule where you’re not allowed to kick a puck into score is to protect players because you don’t want players kicking with blades on their feet, you should just not be able to kick ever, right? If you actually care about the safety and it’s not just a fake rule that makes you feel better about things. I’m fine with the goal counting. I think all goals should count. Yes, there are some safety risks with kicking pucks. I get that. But there are also some safety risks when you sign up to play hockey. There is an unwritten rule about these players get paid millions of dollars and they accept some risk there. I think a good happy medium is maybe you’re not allowed to kick pucks that are in the crease or no kicking motions in the crease because there’s a goalender who’s likely sitting or possibly lying on the ice there and that’s significantly more dangerous. But I’m not here to hash out a specific rule. I am here to just say the NHL rule book continues to be an absolute mess that doesn’t actually do its job at all and the NHL needs to burn it and start over. Okay, did you get that? Let’s move on. Uh yeah, and then nothing else happened in the first period. Genuinely, just nothing. So you roll into the second period and again it starts a little bit slow. I would be lying if I said the ABS showed a lot of energy throughout this game. There were specific players that got up in this game and played well and looked good and had the 110% effort or whatever you want to call it. But a lot of this game was the ABS coasting around putting it in cruise control. If not for Scott Wedgewood, we’re probably talking about this game as a trap game that the ABS fell into. But there’s about a fiveminute stretch of the second period where the ABS finally woke up a little bit and they convert multiple times. The Islanders dump a puck in here and this is super quality defensive stuff from your center. Yes, your defenseman is back in Taves here. He’s going to be challenged for the puck and a puck battle is going to create it. But Nelson immediately comes over and creates a twoon-one puck battle. commits to winning the puck and simply takes this thing away and says, “Thank you very much. This is our puck.” Now, when you see the Islanders try to rechallenge Nelson on this, he does a great job of getting it out of danger and over to the man, Kale Mar. Ross Colton fully believes in Brock Nelson. He knows the ABS are about to make this play and he is gone. He gets to play F1 and just send it up the ice. And once Macar has the puck, yeah, this is what the ABS want on the breakout. Crispy up to Ross Colton. I can say his name, I promise. He gets off a little bit here. This isn’t really a clean breakaway, but Ross Colton occasionally can shoot a puck. He does exactly that and it’s in the back of your net. A beautiful play from all abs involved, but what it really comes down to tonight was goalending. Wedgwood was the better goalie and that’s likely Siroken wanting one back there. There is, however, no takeback sees in the NHL unless you’re Gabe Landiskog and your goal gets challenged. So, it’s one to one. And here’s where we get into something effective for the ABS. They spent the first 25 minutes of this game trying to force pucks to the middle of the ice. An area that the New York Islanders were extremely aggressive in defending, stopping Pucks from ever getting there, dropping at times all five of their defenders down into the slot to not let anything happen there. So, the ABS had to simplify. They had to accept shots from the outside and play the right way to get rewarded. That’s exactly what their third line does. This doesn’t lead directly to the goal, but just watch the third line cycle along the boards deep in the zone on the corner here. This is even kind of a puck win for Drury. They didn’t even really have the puck initially and then Olivesson battles through a guy to get it back to Drury. By then, Landiskog is stepping in to be part of this too as they try to get it off the wall initially. They create a little bit of space as Landy’s able to come out high and they get a shot from out high towards the net. That’s just good quality hard work from the ABS in the Ozone. This shot doesn’t really do a whole lot. It just creates a rebound. A diving play from Landy to get a stick on a puck to keep this possession alive. It’s a little bit of a fumble there from the Islanders defense, too, for sure. But this causes havoc. Look at where the Islanders are defensively. They now have a box playing up high because one Islander is in behind his own net to cover a player from the cycle. And this creates a gap where we haven’t seen much of a gap on this night in the slot area. Olivesson immediately recognizes it. Immediately slides into it. Is not going to be contested, at least not challenged on his stick. And Sam Molinsky throws a puck into the right area towards the net. and Oliffson gets a stick on it. Funny how that works when you score. I was supposed to have already made a full video on Victor Olifson this season, but then my water heater sprung a leak and we had to deal with that. So, I promise that’s coming soon. Olives good. And that was the last thing of note that happened in this game if we’re being honest about it. The ABS really won this game 2-1. This was not as bad as of a game as it seems. I think I do think it is one of the ABS’s worst at five on five though. The ABS did however work themselves into the game and played better as the game went further on, except for one area, penalties. Now, I don’t think this was the best ref game in the world, but I don’t think it was truly a horribly ref game. And the ABS found their way to taking four penalties tonight. That’s not horrible. And again, with the way Wedgwood was playing, Islanders just weren’t going to score on those power plays anyway. But the one you really look at is in a one-goal game late in the third period. Marty nature slips the puck over the boards and gives a way back into the game for the Islanders. It’s just a bad play from Marty, one you need better from there. And you get away with it because Islanders not the best offensive team. A more dangerous team is almost certainly going to punish you for something like that. And this game could have headed to overtime. Got to clean that up a little bit. The lacadasical, soft, not ready for the game, whatever you want to call that type of play also needs to be fixed, but I’m less worried about that. that the ABS have not done a lot of that lately and it’s a little bit of human nature when you go on a big winning streak to have a bit of a slow game eventually. The ABS had it here. They get away with it and great, you get to continue forward with your winning streak and play better in the next one. Nate just picks up the empty netter for a 3-1 goal and then Brock Nelson scores this garbage time goal the exact same way the ABS saw success on the gamewinner. Shots from outside with redirect players playing in front of the net. That’s how you break a team who’s unwilling to give up the slot. you have to find scoring from elsewhere. It’s been a while since it feels like the ABS goalie really stole one, but kind of stole this one. I will say by the end of the game, the only ABS line that ended up underwater in possession numbers was a fourth line, which was a line that Bednar barely played because of how close the game was. Your top line that really didn’t give you a ton for the majority of the game, at least at five on five, and they also failed to score a goal on the power play, ended up being a pretty good possession line for you. And so you’re walking away from a game where you do not feel like the Avalanche played well at five on five, but that not played well is relative to just how good the ABS have been at five on five. You’re walking away from it where the ABS technically won the possession battle in this game for a one-goal game the entirety of its relevant minutes. A game that even a playoff bubble team probably wouldn’t feel that bad about when you actually dig into it. But for the ABS, the expectation is simply higher than that. Clean up the penalties. You’d love to get a power play goal to make your life a little bit easier, but other than that, even when the ABS don’t play their best, they can still beat playoff teams. Yeah, the New York Islanders were in a playoff spot at that moment. I don’t feel like this game deserves a very long review. I’ve probably already gone on long enough, so we’ll just wrap it up here. That is the end of this game video review. Thank you for watching. I am Rudo and now I have to keep shaving.

Scott Wedgewood uses some magic to steal a game for the Colorado Avalanche. The Middle six comes through on offense with Colton, Olofsson and Nelson scoring. Necas would add the empty netter, and the Colorado Avalanche only concede once for the eighth time this season.

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