Colorado Avalanche: A Tale of Special Teams against Chicago

The Colorado Avalanche should focus on special teams to tighten up some of the strategies.

The Colorado Avalanche lost, and I’m not mad. Just like I promised in a previous post, I’m to the point of resignation and acceptance.

Unfortunately, it appears the players are on that bus with me. We’re going to save that post for tomorrow. For right now, let’s talk about what worked and what didn’t last night against the Chicago Blackhawks.

Special teams.

For both teams, the power play was effective. The Avalanche scored their first goal of the game on the power play after our captain, Gabriel Landeskog, tricked Gustav Forsling into tripping him. (Let’s just say our cap is especially light on his toes.)

Our captain then assisted Mikko Rantanen on this goal:

On that goal, Tyson Barrie also made franchise history. He earned an assist on the play, which was his 208th. With that assist, he surpassed John-Michael Liles for assists earned by a defenseman in franchise history. (Liles happened to be commenting the game last night — he was good-natured about it.)

It was good to see that kind of goal from the Colorado Avalanche. Though their power play is still tops in the NHL — #3 in the NHL with a 27.3% conversion rate.

However, recently, the power play has been faltering. The Avs were back to their old habits of passing the puck around like a plate of cookies at a garden party. No, really, as Liles observed, they would pass it around 10 times on the power play.

You don’t get points for keepaway.

Instead, you get points when you get the puck on goal, the goalie coughs up a rebound, and you have a man in position to ram home said rebound.

That’s not the only way to score on the power play, and it’s not even how our Finnish Sniper scored the above goal. However, it’s a mighty effective way to score, much more so than playing keepaway with the boxed out opponent in the center.

The Avs are… less effective on the power play. They’re #16 in the NHL with 78.3%. Indeed, the Blackhawks scored two power play goals against Colorado, including the game-winner in overtime.

The first came on a bad penalty taken by Alexander Kerfoot. While he was sitting in the box within the first two minutes of the game, Alex DeBrincat did this:

He scored the first goal of the game a week ago, too.

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Anyway, look at the two goals. In the Rantanen goal, the Blackhawks maintain their penalty kill formation. The four penalty killers cycle around, but the box never really breaks up. Yes, Rantanen scores anyway, but he does so with a snipe.

In the DeBrincat goal, there is no box. Patrik Nemeth is scrambling with a player behind the net, and J.T. Compher is skating in late from having charged at the Hawks point man. That leaves Carl Soderberg and Ian Cole alone to defend the other three Chicago players.

I know there are more ways than the box to form a penalty kill, but whatever the heck that strategy was failed. Covering two different players individually and leaving your other two penalty killers to defend the middle just didn’t work.

I will give the Colorado Avalanche penalty kill kudos for killing 1:22 of a five-on-three later followed by about 30 seconds of five-on-four. However, the penalty kill failed again in overtime. I’m not going to focus on that one too much because it’s a rare four-on-three situation, so the Avs can be forgiven for not practicing that one too much.

The Avalanche are good on the power play, and that’s not exactly surprising considering the offensive talent they have. They’re not great on the penalty kill, and that’s not exactly surprising considering defense is ever their weakness.

Colorado only has eight points in December. Lucky for them, the Central Division has imploded, so they’re still in third place. However, the Central Division ship will right itself — and the Avs will need to have their own house, including special teams, in order when it does.