Colorado Avalanche Deserved to Win Detroit Game

The Colorado Avalanche fell to the Detroit Red Wings 1-0. The score, of course, shows 3-0, but two of the goals were empty netters. The score of 1-0 really reflects what happened during the game.

Solid Effort

The Colorado Avalanche have been having difficulty keeping their focus for the whole game recently. This was not the case against the Detroit Red Wings. They played a touch, disciplined game.

The Avalanche came out ready to go. They outshot the Red Wings 12 to 5 in the first period alone. You read that right — the Avs outshot the opponent instead of vice verse.

Their intensity continued all the way through. Wonder kid Nathan MacKinnon set the tone early when he participated in his first NHL fight. He didn’t win against his bigger opponent. However, it sets the stage when one of your skill players is willing to drop the gloves in such a situation.

Head coach Patrick Roy said of the team’s effort:

“Five-on-five, I honestly think that we were the best team on the ice. We played really well defensively. Our guys worked hard tonight. I really believe that we were the best team on the ice. It was a 1-0 game, and it could have gone either way in my opinion. It was a hard-fought game.”

Good Goal Tending

Avalanche goalie Semyon Varlamov posted a .963 save percentage. He stopped every shot he faced barring one. The one that went in was when the Detroit Red Wings were on the power play as defenseman Jan Hejda was sitting in the penalty box for interference.

Detroit has the #1 power play in the NHL. They are machine-like in their precision, and that showed.

Nonetheless, Varlamov made so many key saves during the game.

Power Play Woes

The special teams ended up being the deciding factor. The Avalanche went 0 for 3 on the power play against the Wings. The Avs are not 0 for 22.

Head coach Patrick Roy is understandably displeased:

“Zero-on-22, that’s not acceptable to me. Also, tonight it was a difference maker. They scored on their power play, and we could not score on ours.”

Both defenseman Nate Guenin and winger Alex Tanguy blamed the lack of production for the loss.

Guenin said of the Red Wings goal:

“Special teams, they got the better of us there with the power-play goal, and that turned out being the difference.”

Tanguay seems to be shaking his head about the situation:

“They took care of their one power play, and we didn’t take care of our power plays,. It’s very frustrating. Those are points we needed bad.”

Coach Roy is looking to make some changes on the power play moving forward:

“I guess we’re going to have to think about the players we’re going to put on the ice, and we’re going to have to see about maybe doing things a little different.”

Referee Interference

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The referees seem to forget the point of the hockey game is the hockey, not the officiating.

They let a lot of penalties go by, letting players get clutched and grabbed and tripped. Then, when it’s a play that does not affect the well-being of a player, they call it.

In the game against the Detroit Red wings, it cost the Avalanche a goal.

Petr Mrazek got credited for a shut out. However, he did not have a shut out. Colorado Avalanche captain Gabriel Landeskog scored a goal at about the six-minute mark of the first period.

However, defenseman Nick Holden had stopped a flying puck with his glove. He dropped it to his feet to set up a pass. Red Wing defenseman Kyle Quincey kicked it away from Holden before he could touch it with his stick. Landeskog corralled the puck, and beat Mrazek short side.

The goal was a beauty, a sniper’s shot. It was a goal, no question. It was a goal in a league that laments the lack of scoring these days.

Well, the referees looked like they were the Keystone Cops as they tried to figure out if one of them had blown a whistle on the play, thought about blowing a whistle on the play or maybe once owned a whistle. It was a pathetic display of ineptitude at the position.

As you can see by the score, the goal did not stand. They ruled that Holden executed a hand pass. How a move that gets kicked by the opponent can be ruled a pass at all is the big question. That suggests that if a player ever touches the puck with his hand, it’s going to be a hand pass.

Anyway, the goal was disallowed, and it cost the Avalanche a point in what was essentially a 1-0 game. I do hope that the NHL looks at such plays by such referees when they’ve cost a team potential movement in the standings. It’s not their game — they’re just there to ensure the rules are followed. They should not be allowed to interpret the rules so openly.

In any case, thanks to other losses around the Western Conference, the Colorado Avalanche did not lose any ground in their race to a Wild Card spot in the playoffs. The Avalanche face their divisional rivals the Minnesota Wild on Saturday evening in Minnesota.