The dominance the Avalanche have shown at five-on-five all season made it easy, at least for a little bit, to ignore the lack of power-play goals.

They were drawing penalties and not scoring. At the other end, the penalty kill was among the best in the league and wasn’t giving up much. And throughout the rest of the game, Colorado was dominating opponents. It wasn’t a perfect recipe, but it was working.

But things have taken a bad turn. The Avs are scoring at a slightly higher clip on the power play in recent weeks. But it’s nowhere near enough to offset the insane amount of shorthanded goals that other teams are getting past them.

Even with 44 wins in 64 games, even though they’re 7-2 since the Olympic break, the Avalanche’s power play has a shorthanded goal problem.

It’s a habit they need to rid themselves of before the playoffs begin.

10 Takeaways

1. We’ve reached a point where the biggest issue with the power play is no longer Colorado’s struggles to score. It’s the number of shorthanded goals they allow. At the 40-game mark, the Avs had given up just four shorthanded tallies, which was the 14th most in the league at the time. But after Ryker Evans’ second-period goal, Colorado now has eight shorthanded goals against in the last 24 games. It’s way too much.

2. The weird part about this particular statistic is that we’ve seen good teams struggle with it in the past. Last year’s Tampa Bay Lightning led the league with 13 shorthanded against. The 2019 Boston Bruins, who made the Stanley Cup Final, gave up a league-high 15 shorthanded goals. If you want to stick with the Avalanche, the 1995-96 Stanley Cup championship team gave up a whopping 22 shorthanded goals against, which was the most that season.

3. The power play since the Olympic break has taken a nice step forward, going 7-for-30 (23.3%, 15th in the NHL). It’s still not quite at the top of the league, but it’s certainly better than sitting at the bottom. The only problem is, giving up three shorties means they’re just a +4 goal differential on the man advantage. That also ranks right in the middle of the pack. They still need to clean up those shorthanded goals against, though.

4. If you were expecting MacKinnon to come out with a vengeance after getting ejected, you were right. MacKinnon had a goal and three assists, catapulting up to 108 points on the season following a game that was cut short at Ball Arena on Tuesday. You just knew he had this in him. It’s a Thursday night game against a non-division team that’s still not guaranteed to even make the playoffs. But he still took things personally.

This came after the league rescinded his match penalty, ultimately admitting that it wasn’t supposed to happen.

5. Score effects were very real against the Kraken. Colorado had just 11 shots in the last two periods after putting up 15 and building a three-goal lead through the first 20 minutes. The Kraken had 21 shots in the final two periods, but still, Colorado outscored them 2-1.

6. Nazem Kadri celebrated his goal with an insane amount of passion. That man is so unbelievably happy to be here. You can tell, in just three games, how much it means for him to be back in the thick of things with a team ready to challenge for a Stanley Cup with a group he loves.

I have yet to find an angle of this, but when Kadri assisted on the MacKinnon goal against Minnesota, he celebrated with one of those passionate fist pumps towards the ice (the vintage Kadri celly), while MacKinnon was pointing at him. My eyes went right to him after MacKinnon scored, and you can see him soaking in that moment.

Kudos to him for getting his first goal with the Avalanche since the OT winner in Game 4 of the 2022 Stanley Cup Final.

7. Scott Wedgewood is now 5-0 since the Olympic break and has given up just six goals on 131 shots (.954 save percentage). His last start before this was that terrible seven-goal performance in Montreal in late January. His ability to bounce back from that loss means he’s now No. 1 in the league in save percentage (.918) and goals against average (2.16).

8. Wedgewood improved to 25-4-5 on the season and a whopping 38-8-6 since Chris MacFarland traded for him a little over 15 months ago.

9. Nic Roy had Colorado’s power play goal in Seattle. That’s his second goal in four games since he was acquired from the Toronto Maple Leafs. He had only five goals in 59 games with the Leafs.

10. Shout out to Brent Burns for tying Keith Yandle for the second-longest Ironman streak in NHL history. At 989 games in a row, Burns needs another 76 to pass Phil Kessel for the record. That means he’d need to dress in all 18 of the Avs’ remaining games and another 58 games in a row next season, whether in Colorado or elsewhere.