Sometimes, it takes the Colorado Avalanche a little extra time to turn on the jets. That is what happened on Saturday night against the Dallas Stars. After two goals by Stars’ Tyler Seguin and one by Joe Pavelski, Colorado found themselves in a hole after the first frame. To a point, the game felt over as soon as the Stars scored a goal 30 seconds into the second period.
That’s my mistake.
Colorado came back to score six unanswered goals. You read that right: six unanswered goals. Five of those were against goaltender Jake Oettinger, while the last one was an empty-net goal by Ross Colton.
12 of the Colorado Avalanche’s 38 shots were right in Oettinger’s face and they found a lot of success shooting the puck in the slot (between the circles).
The Colorado Avalanche needed this type of win. The division is not much of a concern at this point in time because there is so much hockey left to be played, but the thing that I find extremely impressive is that the Avalanche fought back from a 3-0 deficit and completely took over the game after that first period.
That’s the Avalanche team that we are accustomed to seeing on the ice. That’s the team that we know they are capable of being. Yeah, it takes time to gel with new linemates. I understand all of that. Is it possible that they finally have done it? Miles Wood and Ryan Johansen have found a place with this team. These two acquisitions were great for the Avs.
Johansen has six goals on the season and Wood has three. While that doesn’t live up to a guy such as Mikko Rantanen (11), those players are doing well for being new on the team.
The Avalanche won just 39.6 percent of the faceoffs on Saturday night, which is terrible. They were terrible with giving away the puck (six turnovers), and couldn’t intercept the puck from the Stars more than once.
They just have to keep fighting and hopefully, they can start to begin games by scoring the first (and hopefully second) goal of games going forward so that Colorado Avalanche fans don’t have to start reaching for that panic button.
This was the most impressive win of the season for the Avalanche. The way they rebounded from a tough deficit and torched the Stars—that’s what we want to see going forward. We love to see this sort of effort!