Colorado Avalanche: Round 2 vs the Ottawa Senators

The Colorado Avalanche hope to tie the series against the Ottawa Senators in the Global Series Sweden games.

The Colorado Avalanche are set to face the Ottawa Senators for their second game of the SAP Global Series match up. Yesterday, Colorado enjoyed home ice advantage. Today it goes to Ottawa.

The Senators took the first game of the series. Colorado went up first on a goal by Nail Yakupov, but Ottawa scored the next two. The two teams traded goals back and forth after that, which got them to overtime. However, the Avalanche never regained the lead, and a Mark Stone goal just 59 seconds into overtime sealed the deal for the Senators.

Today’s a new day, though. It’s time for Round 2 of the Global Series match.

How to Enjoy the Game

Game time: November, 11, 11:00 am MT
TV Networks: Altitude TV (Avs feed), TSN5  (Sens’ feed), SN, RDS
Radio: Altitude Radio (AM 950)

Full 60 Minutes

The Colorado Avalanche came out of the gates hot. The play was very entertaining in the first period. The Avs and Sens are surprisingly well matched for two teams in different conferences. Both like to skate, though, and both are built for speed.

Unfortunately, as happens all too often with the Avalanche, they took their collective foot off the gas in the second period. Even though we got to see a slick Alexander Kerfoot goal after an even slicker play by Samuel Girard:

Colorado still got only three shots on goal that period. The play was in their end for a lot of the period, especially in the first 10 minutes. The third period was lackadaisical for the Avalanche, with them showing only shifts of intensity.

The Colorado Avalanche are a good team — when they play all 60.

Kerf-Kinnon

More from Mile High Sticking

• Could Colorado Avalanche move on from Pavel Francouz next offseason?
• 4 goalies to replace Pavel Francouz if he has to miss time
• Colorado Avalanche make sneaky signing with Tatar
• Colorado Avalanche captain Gabriel Landeskog could return in 2023-24 playoffs
• Colorado Avalanche rookie face-off tournament roster

Two players are really shining for the Colorado Avalanche, one surprisingly, one not so.

Center Nathan MacKinnon seemed to flip a switch five games ago. Prior to that, he had just one goal and five points in 10 games. Now, he has four goals and a total 10 points in five games. What’s more, he’s no longer disappearing during games — that jump we remember from his rookie season is back.

You know who leads all Colorado Avalanche players in goals? Alexander Kerfoot, with six. He now has 11 points in 15 games. That’s pretty impressive from the rookie. By the way, he’s back on a line with Nail Yakupov, and that seems to be serving the latter well, too.

Matt Duchene Will Score

It was awkward and weird watching Matt Duchene skate for the Ottawa Senators. Even though I’ve watching him play for Team Canada, it just didn’t seem normal to see him out of an Avs sweater. For a while, it even looked like he was moving differently — more ponderously.

Well, that didn’t last. He’s all-in on his new team, as he should be. And while he didn’t get any points yesterday against the Avalanche, he got some really good looks.

We’ve gotten the inevitable first game against Dutchy out of the way. We might as well get the first time of getting scored on by Duchene out of the way, too.

Fun fact: All time, Duchene has scored two goals and two assists against the Ottawa Senators.

Next: Top Stories for the NHL Global Series in Sweden

After completing the NHL Global Series with today’s game, the Colorado Avalanche will return to Denver. We have to wait a full four days again until their match against the Washington Capitals on Thursday, November 16.