The Colorado Avalanche are heading into a Tuesday night matchup against the Detroit Red Wings, two day after they defeated the Montreal Canadiens in a shootout. Following the Saturday victory, head coach Jared Bednar gave out a small secret from the bench area leading into the shootout.
While it’s usually always the coach’s call to put players in the positions they want, it was Jonathan Drouin who took the lead on the call. When Bednar went up to Drouin letting him know he was up next for the one chance to score on the Canadiens, The forward told his head coach that Brock Nelson should take the shot instead.
It’s a really cool thing to see. To me, that’s somewhat of a leadership sort of move by Drouin. Instead of taking the shot like Bednar had asked, he decides that another player should be in his place and essentially has a better chance at getting the puck into the Canadiens’ net with the huge rule in shootouts—that you’re only allowed one shot per shootout opportunity.
You can check out the clip here.
I definitely won’t pretend that I know what the in-depth analysis is on Nelson’s shootout goal. My brief analysis is that Nelson skates slightly to the left before making contact with the puck, and waits until he is past the two faceoff dots in Montreal’s end before sending a wrist shot Sam Montembeault‘s way and getting the win.
The fact that Drouin passed the opportunity off to Nelson also shows the impact of chemistry with the players in the short time that they have played together. A type of endorsement, if you will. They have been on the Avalanche together now for just a couple of weeks. Drouin has been with the Avalanche since July 1, 2023 and the team successfully re-signed him this past offseason, for a single year. Many thought that he’d out-price himself, but he took a discount to stay in Colorado.
Both Nelson and Drouin are free agents after this season, but it will be interesting to see whether or not they both decide that Colorado is where they want to be. If so, that could be a huge boost in situations like the team had the other night. Who knows? Maybe, if both players stay in Colorado long-term, they can build a type of chemistry that Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar have with each other on the ice.
Personally, I feel like this group of players have a great bond with each other. That’s part of what can make a champion a champion. We’ll see if that sort of thing can have an impact on Colorado’s quest to hoist the Stanley Cup again. The Avalanche have just 12 players from their recent Stanley Cup team. Those players, along with any other Stanley Cup champion on the team, can teach their teammates how to win. That process likely started a long time ago, but is becoming more and more important as we head into the postseason. They all want to win, it’s just a matter of how much and what it takes in the end.