Colorado Avalanche Deflate Boston Bruins Like a Football

The Colorado Avalanche hosted the Boston Bruins for their second and final meeting of the season. It was a home game for the Avalanche, though it was hard to tell with all the Bruins jerseys in the stands. The Avalanche were fresh off of a five-game road trip, though they only had practice yesterday. The Bruins played the Dallas Stars in Dallas last night.

Deja Vu All Over Again

Remember when Colorado center Daniel Briere scored with half a second left to win the first game for the Avalanche? That game was against the Boston Bruins.

Well, another veteran must have liked how that worked out. In the final seconds of the first period, the Bruins got sloppy in the neutral zone, and the Avalanche took possession.

Alex Tanguay moved into the offensive zone and took a shot. Boston goalie Tuukka Rask made the save, but gave up the rebound. Left winger Jarome Iginla corralled the puck and tipped it in just as the horn sounded. He had a whopping four-tenths of a second left. The Avalanche were up 1-0.

The period otherwise favored the Bruins somewhat. The Avs did beat them on shots on goal, nine to seven. However, the Bruins had nine minutes of puck possession to the Avalanche’s seven.

Avalanche Go on Vacay

I’m stymied. The Colorado Avalanche is composed of mostly 20-somethings. There’s one 19-year-old and a handful of 30-somethings. Every single one of them is in the prime physical fitness possible.

Why, then, do they insist on taking the second period off for most games? Yes, hockey is a physical, demanding sport — but see above. Other teams play a whole 60 — why can’t the Avalanche?

Sure enough, they took the majority of the second period off. First, they let Bruins forward Tory Krug score a goal just over six minutes into the stanza. It was only a matter of time — the Bruins had the puck most of the time. Every time the Avs got the puck, they passed it right back to the Bruins.

Then, they blew more than four minutes of three back-to-back power plays, including two 5-on-3 situations. They passed the puck. They let the puck squirt out of the zone. The moseyed after the puck. At one point even the announcer observed that their play looked “casual.” There was one flurry when Erik Johnson got a couple shots off and Alex Tanguay was robbed by Tuukka Rask. Then it was back to business as usual — passing, chasing, meandering, passing.

Pathetic. Mile High Sticking editor Austin Manak had a cute way of commenting on the power play:

But it was really just pathetic.

The Avalanche were outshot 12 to seven, which would be worse if it weren’t for all that power play time they were given.

A Fighting Chance…

The third period started with a fight between Avalanche captain Gabriel Landeskog and Bruins defenseman, little Dougie Hamilton. I like to call him that because he’s a ginger with a sweet face. (And because he chooses to go by Dougie.)

Well, his face isn’t so sweet now. The captain laid him with a pretty good hook, and little Dougie’s got a shiner.

Next: Captain Fight

Avalanche center Ryan O’Reilly, who won the Lady Byng last year after earning only two penalty minutes, earned two minutes for roughing as he got in a scuffle with Brad Marchand.

It looked like the Avalanche were going to fall. After blowing another power play, Bruins forward Brad Marchand, fresh off his scuffle with O’Reilly, scored to put Boston up 2-1.

The Bruins play a very defensive style of hockey. They know how to shut down the best of offenses, and the Avs haven’t been at their best. To give them credit, they started peppering shots at Rask — Rask is just that good. He turned them all aside.

When Avalanche forward Max Talbot got called for hooking with just under six minutes to play, it looked especially dire. The Avalanche penalty kill has been pretty good, but you never know…

Well, it was good tonight. Talbot came out of the penalty box with just over three minutes left in regulation. About 30 seconds later goalie Semyon Varlamov headed for the bench.

The Avs came on like gangbusters. They were fighting for it. It looked really good, though, that Rask was going to continue denying them.

And then… at 18:15 of the third, Ryan O’Reilly finally snuck a backhand past Rask. The game was tied.

Rask Busted the Gang

Remember that vacay the Avalanche took in the second? Well, it rested them up for overtime hockey. They dominated the overtime period. The Boston announcers commented that the Avs are worst in the NHL for four-on-four hockey, but that’s hard to believe. The open ice favors their style.

It was all Avs all the time in overtime. They recorded four shots on goal, and several others got blocked or deflected. Tuukka Rask denied each and every one, including a sick wrist shot from Matt Duchene. The game went into the shootout.

Semyon Varlamov has not been sharp in the shootouts this season — he lost two during the road trip. Plus, Rask had been so solid, turning away 34 of the Avs’ 36 shots on goal. The Bs only had 24. (That’s right — the Avs outshot a team!) Again, it was worrisome that Colorado might only get a point on the night.

Amazingly, the wonder kid, Nathan MacKinnon, got his shot past Rask. He’d denied all three of MacKinnon’s game-time shots, but the wonder kid got one past him.

And it turned out to be the game-winning goal. The Avalanche beat the Bruins in the shootout 3-2.

The Colorado Avalanche, along with the rest of the NHL, are off the next few days for the All Star break. The Avalanche play again on Tuesday, January 26, facing the Predators in Nashville.

NB: The title, of course, is a reference to DeflateGate, going on in New England right now.