The Colorado Avalanche are leaving Minnesota with another win on their record, which is their 26th of the season and they have also recorded their 59th point on the year. With that, the team is six points ahead of the Dallas Stars and 10 ahead of the Wild.
The Avalanche got up to a 3-0 lead after the second period, while the Wild could only get one goal past Mackenzie Blackwood off of 29 total shots on goal. The Avalanche had a very impressive 34 shots after the second frame.
The biggest highlight of the night was that the power plays finally connected, and it connected twice out of four attempts. Well, with one specific detail: The Wild were called for a double-minor penalty, which put the Avalanche on a four-minute power play in the second frame.
At 6:23 remaining in the second period, and the first Avalanche power play goal took place. Nathan MacKinnon received the pass from Brock Nelson at the top of the right circle (goalie perspective) for a nice slapshot. That made the game 2-0 in favour of the Avalanche.
Later on a different power play, the Avalanche had another chance at scoring while the Wild were a man short. Cale Makar decided that it was time to follow MacKinnon’s lead and score a goal of his own.
With a lot of space to work with, Makar received a pass and decided to shoot the puck almost immediately, after skating it up just a little bit. By the looks of it, I don’t think that the Wild goalie was able to see very well, and I think that Makar knew that and decided to take a shot at him. That’s exactly what this team has been missing on the power play: They seem to take the puck and pass it too much while the seconds tick off the clock.
You have to shoot the puck as many times as possible sometimes. If you continue to wait on the perfect opportunity, you won’t get enough shots on the goalie. I just feel like the Avalanche’s Achilles’ heel is that they look for the perfect play, and if it’s not there, they just continue to waste precious clock.
The Avs host the Utah Mammoth on Tuesday as they look to continue their win streak. They can take what they learned on the successful power plays and build off of them going forward.