Ross Colton helps make the Avalanche forward core the deepest in the NHL | Avalanche Review Game 14

Ross Colton helps make the Avalanche forward core the deepest in the NHL | Avalanche Review Game 14

We spent the majority of this off seasonason hoping that the ABS have shored up their depth on both the offensive and defensive sides. And now that we sit here after game 14, the conversation is much more along the lines of is the ABS the deepest team in the NHL. ABS win over the Tampa Bay Lightning 3 to2. Colorado has a great top line. Nathan McKinnon and Marty Nas are awesome and Luckin makes a great adult there. They’ve been awesome this year and they will continue to be so, but that is the expectation from one of the best lines in the NHL. It’s the guys behind them that have continued to impress this season, especially more recently, and are making the ABS a force to truly be reckoned with. Tonight was a little weird at times. When the ABS needed to be good at five on five, they absolutely were. But there were also some lols to their game at five on five. Statistically, it’s one of their weaker possession games, but realistically, the ABS played pretty darn well against a pretty darn good opponent, too. That isn’t to say it was perfect. The first 8 to 10 minutes of this game had a lot of sluggishness from the ABS. It was definitely a slow start. I think that’s totally fair to say. And it wasn’t a perfectly clean game either. About 90 seconds in, your best player, or certainly at least your best defenseman, makes another bad mistake. ABS are battling for possession in their own zone against Tampa’s top players. And they ultimately look like they win it as a puck gets sent in deep and Kale Mar collects in behind his net. He is getting crashed from both sides heavily though and he does not get a lot of help. We see I don’t know if this is a little bit of a collision from the ABS but Nushkin’s leaving. Colton is going to go to leave. The forward core is not supporting at all and Taves is unfortunately kind of floating in no man’s land as Mar gets crashed on by two sides. Mar tries to go up the wall to Nushkin here but it just gets cleanly blocked. It’s not a very good play from Mar and I don’t know that it was even necessarily the right decision, but he could have used some more help. I think both arguments are fair here. Either way, this is bad as Cooch collects it and it’s just a really tough spot for Wedgewood. You’re not expecting a turnover there and it’s in the back of your net. It was another not great game for Macar. I will say I do think it was significantly better than his last one against the Sharks. He found ways to be effective even if he wasn’t the unreal version of Kale Mar that we’re so used to. And sitting here knowing the ABS win this game and in hindsight knowing the rest of their decor was pretty darn good for most of the night. I don’t have too much of a problem with this. You do not want to see this stretch continue. The ABS are about to get three days off and you want to see Kale Mar come back and be great again. But I do think it’s okay that you can get away with it sometimes. I was skeptical that the ABS would be able to get away with their top pair struggling, but they did just that in this game. What helped them get that engine going was a fight pretty early on from Landis Gogg maybe six minutes into the game. Now, if you watch this channel, you know I’m not a big believer in fights to really get you amped up. And I don’t think that’s a thing that works most of the time. I will say though, when it’s your captain throwing the hands and wanting to get you amped up, that does change the math a little bit there. It certainly carries some extra weight when the guy with the C on his chest does something like that. And I’ll give Landy credit. I do think it helped the ABS in this game. The ABS would get two power play opportunities in the first period of this game, but one of them looked really good and didn’t score and the second one did in fact do the thing. After winning a faceoff, the ABS are set up here. A nice little play from a car at the blue line to keep this possession alive. And then some good quick movement of the puck gets them properly set up and not under pressure. Nate just takes the space he’s given and feeds to McKinnon. And McKinnon doesn’t try to do too much. So often we see McKinnon try to thread a puck through three players that just even if you’re Nathan McKinnon is not going to get through that often. He goes to the net, he throws a puck on net. It’s not a great shot, but Vasalefki stops it and it’s still loose. And Nathan McKinnon is unbelievably skilled. So he gets his hands up, he gets the stick on the puck again and knocks it loose and that allows a loose puck on the opposite side where Tampa isn’t covering. And Victor Olifson is the man crashing the net that is able to finish the power play goal. I think it’s important to note here that high-skll plays can come close in around the net and in the dirty areas. It doesn’t all have to be all world perimeter plays. That’s a pretty highlevel play from Nathan McKinnon to end up getting that puck across to Olivesson. Special teams would ultimately end up being the difference tonight. Both teams would score twice at five on five. The ABS power play would go one for four and Tampa would go 0 for three. The ABS power play doesn’t have to be exceptionally good. You can go one for four on a night and that will be enough to make the difference for Colorado. Great to see that in this one. So, it’s a 1-1 game after the first period that you didn’t love from the ABS, but it wasn’t the worst. And while I think the first couple of minutes maybe felt a little bit sluggish of the second period for the ABS, for the majority of the second, the ABS just go out and dominate. They keep pushing high danger chances on repeat and they really don’t give up very much to Tampa in the period. In the parts of the period where Tampa pushed, the ABS weather the storm and that early on storm breaks pretty quickly and the ABS immediately jump on them. The ABS are relentless. This is a puck just dumped down, deflected, and in. So, it’s not an icing. And Olison chases it all the way down, goes directly in on Headman, and causes chaos. This isn’t immediately a great chance, but when you pan back to the high cam, Gabe Landiskog is the next man in. The ABS all of a sudden have puck possession in the zone because of the ABS outworking Tampa. It’s that simple. Landy finds himself a little bit of space. This is really nice work from Jack Drury to find the space that’s given to you. Go to the soft spots. It’s not a hard play. It’s not a hard pass for Landy. And you know what? Sometimes you’re allowed to get lucky. Jack Drury just whiffs on this puck and it kicks directly across the slot. Olifson again finding the right areas to be. He’s so good at quietly getting to these spots. This one comes right to him and that’s an unstoppable finish. Is there some good fortune there? Yeah, absolutely. But that’s three forwards on your third line all getting to the right parts of the ice and getting rewarded for it. And we need to talk about Victor Olivesson. I’m probably going to make a whole video on this sometime this week specifically about him, but we are having a conversation that Victor Olson might be the best move of this off season. I guess maybe the Mitch Marner trade for Vegas you could argue is better. But Olivesson has been unbelievably huge for the ABS. That gives the ABS their first lead of the game and they don’t wait long to extend it. Less than 90 seconds later, they stretch it to two. Had to swap to the TNT feed here cuz it’s slightly better about capturing this play, but it also missed the face off. Please do better NHL. But Nelson has won a tie-up face off from the dot here that Molinsky has collected and is going to cycle out to space. And you can see this play develop from what we did actually get to watch as once Ross Colton recognizes that the Gavs are free and clear of this face off and completely in possession. He plays the F1 spot perfectly. He doesn’t fly the zone too early, so he’s not putting the ABS in a dangerous spot, but as Molinsky escapes, he’s off to the races. Already off your screen, and the ABS know they’re going to stretch out the ice here. This is an incredibly intelligent pass from Molinsky. It’s not super high skill. It’s not all world, but he puts the puck up off the boards and in a spot where this is never going to go to anyone but Ross Colton. Whether Ross Colton is losing this race or winning it, it’s always going to be on a safe side where Colton can collect it and then go where he wants. Colton does win this race, creates a clean breakaway for himself. And that is does a great job to outweight Vasalefki. He goes to the backhand side early, but makes it look at least threatening that he could go five hole before stretching this play out and getting just around the pad. Now, this doesn’t go in immediately despite the great play, it does hit the post, but with Vaselki out of control stretching off the post, off Vaselki, and in. I love everything about this play from the ABS depth players. Is there a little bit of good fortune that it goes off the post, off Vasilki, and in for Colton? Sure, maybe. But the ABS play at five on five this year has been good enough that they’ve certainly earned some bounces breaking their way. The ABS time and time again are proving they’re extremely hard to handle top to bottom in their lineup at five on five. They’re going to make you earn it the whole way through. And even their fourth line, I think that’s true of. I know parts of it didn’t play very much tonight and haven’t been playing very much. Part of that is Brinley is injured, but he’s close to getting back. And now we’re not too far away from Logan Okconor returning to the lineup, too. And keep in mind, while Bedar is not playing Bardikov or Neielson or whoever’s in that 12th forward spot very much, he is playing Parker Kelly a bunch and he will play Logan Oconor a bunch. And certainly of the rotating cast, Brinley was starting to earn more time before this concussion and he should be back shortly. So hopefully he can get back in and play that 9 plus minute role. You have your third liners playing that 12 to 14 minute range and pretty consistently producing. Your second liners are regularly breaching the 20inute barrier, playing a ton, doing great defensively to get puck possession going the right way, and now you’re starting to see their points pick up, too. And all that takes a load off of your stars. McKinnon just barely touched 22 minutes tonight, and NIS was barely over 21. Maybe I’m just being a homer here, but I really think the ABS probably have the deepest or at least certainly a top five deepest forward core in the NHL. So, it’s a 3-1 lead after the second period. You go into the third period. The ABS actually started it with a really good penalty kill, but shortly after that it’s a one-goal lead. The ABS are just killing a penalty here as Tampa is getting reset. So maybe it does leave things a little bit awkward. You end up with Brock Nelson trying to get off the ice and leaving the ABS with one less body cleanly on this breakin for Tampa than you would like. So you’re facing down a threeon two on this end of the ice and ultimately it’s not the best defense of all time. You see Molinsky being on the left side gets kind of stuck. Taves has also cheated to this left side. You can understand that to some extent because this is forcing Point over and across to his backhand. But as Point goes to that backhand, Taves maybe realizes that he’s a half step too far to the left and it gives Point enough room to get a shot off. Now, if you don’t put a perfect all-world backhand on this puck, it’s probably not that dangerous of a play, but Braden Point does just that. I don’t know, man. Did Tae play that perfectly? No, but you forced a guy to his backhand and the guy just made a great play. Braden Point’s a really good hockey player. Tampa Bay is a pretty darn good hockey team. They’re going to make plays sometimes. That’s why you score three. And I do think it’s fair to have a little bit of concern here, especially of late. We’ve seen the ABS allow games to get closer than maybe you would like. It happened in the third period of the Vegas game too a couple of times. But you’ll notice that’s against good teams. And you’ll also notice that they only let them get close. It’s not like they blew it. They won this game. From that point on, the ABS kind of did what Tampa has been doing to teams in the third period, playing with the lead and simply smothering them. At five on five in the third period, the ABS out attempted and outshot Tampa Bay. They actually generated more expected goals for than Tampa Bay in the period. Despite the ABS being the leading team and to be honest, they just didn’t give up much to Tampa Bay throughout the entire game. Only eight high danger chances throughout the whole thing. Colorado is winning hockey games in a lot of ways. They’re winning close situations. They’ve won blowouts now. They make games they lose extremely close every single time. And it’s not just the stars lifting them up and carrying. They’ve gotten carry jobs from third line players, second line players. They’ve gotten effectiveness up and down the lineup. The defense has stepped in regularly at times. And it’s not just Kale Marinsky with a point tonight. We’ve seen Burns and Manson get involved in those offensive plays. There’s a real lot of good. The ABS might be really, really good. certainly when they play to their ability. And Jared Bedar talked after this game like he didn’t think the ABS were even all that great. He thinks there’s a lot more there. Wedgewood put on a good performance, too. I don’t know that you can ask a whole lot of him on both of the goals that went in the net and he stopped everything else. He also did a good job of tracking pucks and finding the ones he needed to, especially at times late in this game with the goalie pulled. Tampa looked dangerous a few times, but Wedgwood was all over the place making sure it wasn’t going to happen to the ABS. It’s early November. It’s way too early to say that the ABS have that special something, but I don’t think it’s too early to say the ABS are one of the best teams in the NHL, and the standings reflect that. That is the end of this game video review. Thank you for watching. Head on over to the ddnvr.com for all of our coverage. I am Rudo and seriously Victor Olifson

Ross Colton gave the Colorado Avalanche a big game winning goal on top of two goals from Olofsson as the Avs depth was better than the Lightning’s best players. Colorado’s forward core is looking to have it all.

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