Colorado Avalanche Suffer Power Outage against Chicago

The Colorado Avalanche dropped a game they should have won against Central Division rival Chicago Blackhawks. They fell to .500 on the home stand.

The Colorado Avalanche lost to the Chicago Blackhawks. This is not the Blackhawks of yesteryear who would go on to make deep playoff runs, if not actually win the Cup. This is a Hawks team that’s second-to-last in the Central Division — and St. Louis has five games in hand to catch up, and only two points differential.

With the loss to the Blackhawks, the Avalanche fall to 2-2 on the four-game home stand, the longest home stand of the season so far. (It’s also tied for the longest of the year unless you count the one that sandwiches the bye-week.)

There were two main culprits to why the Avs lost and one bad goal in an otherwise solid goal tending performance.

The first culprit is a little worrisome, but not too much considering who we’re talking about. Colorado is suffering from a dearth of scoring right now. In the home stand, 10 goals. However, that number is skewed by the six-goal game against the Dallas Stars to begin the home stand. In the last three games, they’ve scored just four goals.

That amount of offense isn’t going to get it done. However, I said it’s not too worrisome considering who we’re talking about. The Colorado Avalanche have a high-octane offense that’s just lapsing a little at the moment. However, this is a team whose goal differential is +16 — they’ll get to their scoring ways again.

The other culprit is a little more worrisome. The Avalanche went 0-5 on the power play… against the worst penalty killing team in the NHL. Especially when you’re the #3 team in the NHL for scoring on the power play like the Avalanche are.

The last — and, unfortunately, main — culprit for why the Avalanche lost to the Blackhawks is one bad goal. Goalie Philipp Grubauer was phenomenal tonight and made some downright incredible saves. However, he made one mistake:

He just couldn’t find the puck. It trickled behind him. Tyson Barrie also couldn’t locate the puck and… we have the game-winning goal. Yep, that sucks, but it was the game-winning goal.

Side note: I always access these highlights off the Avalanche website, and they are almost always the opponent feed. Why is that?

Anyway, the refereeing was spectacularly bad, as always. Seriously, these referees need to be given eye tests and bias tests on a regular basis.

The first non-call resulted in an injury:

If the referee had called a blatant trip on Gabriel Landeskog right before the accidental trip, said trip wouldn’t have happened. As it is, Colin Wilson underwent an X-ray, and the news came out that, at best, he’s week-to-week.

The second non-call came after a scary play:

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Jonathan Toews literally sweeps Sam Girard’s feet out from under him just behind the goal net. That’s exceedingly dangerous because both players are skating at full speed, and they’re dangerously close to the net. As you can see, Girard careens back-first at speed into the boards and is clearly shaken.

First of all, Girard was clearly ahead of Toews and would have taken possession of the puck. The referees should have blow the whistle for no icing. Secondly, if you’re not going to do your job there, then at least call the dangerous trip that Toews inflicted on Girard. But, no, of course not.

Girard left the game after that collision with the boards and did not return. However, coach Jared Bednar stated in his post-game presser that he expected Girard was fine and good to go for the next game.

Remember, the Colorado Avalanche are already down a defenseman with Nikita Zadorov day-to-day with a muscle tweak that he suffered against the Montreal Canadiens. He won’t return before the Christmas break.

This also happened in the game:

A pox on Gustav Forsling for whacking Tyson Jost in the face with his stick. Jost ended up with a bleeding nose and a cut chin.

Well, we can hope for better refereeing in the Colorado Avalanche’s next game, tomorrow evening against the Arizona Coyotes. Don’t hold your breath, though.