Colorado Avalanche and an unfortunate theme this season

The Colorado Avalanche dropped their game against the Edmonton Oilers on Friday night, and they looked bad—uninspired—while doing so. In a fight to climb higher in the 2023-24 NHL postseason and have a higher seed, the Avalanche laid back and let the Oilers climb all over them in a 6-2 blowout.

With the Avalanche having stars like Nathan MacKinnon, Mikko Rantanen (until his injury), Cale Makar, and a couple of new guys acquired at the trade deadline, fans would like to see a better outcome and performance by a Stanley Cup favourite. Just because they secured a playoff spot doesn’t mean the domination should be held back from now until the playoffs begin. They need to keep showing brilliance and domination to their opponents.

While I understand the Oilers have a ton of star players in Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl, Darnell Nurse, Adam Henrik and Evander Kane, the Avalanche also have a strong group of stars. They didn’t live up to that on Friday night. They straight up got outplayed.

Oftentimes when a goal gets in against the Avalanche, fans including myself try and determine whose fault it was. Sometimes it is the goaltender’s fault and sometimes it is a skill player turning the puck over. The latter happened in the Oilers’ first goal of the night but there were a couple of goals against that were nobody’s fault—they were just outstanding shots by Oilers players.

The Colorado Avalanche are awesome when shooting 30+ times a game, but…

As this subheading indicates, the Colorado Avalanche have a strong record when they have 30 or more shots on goal in a game. By the end of the first period, they had six shots on goal in the first period—six! That’s not going to get the job done, especially when your opponent has 11 more than you.

The Avalanche have a 34-13-5 record when shooting the puck on the net 30+ times. They had 23 against Edmonton.

The point I am trying to make is, just shoot the darn puck. The Colorado Avalanche just try and get the perfect shot way too often instead of throwing the puck on the net. It infuriates the heck out of me and many Avs fans. They’re a bit soft in a way when it comes to that. Just because you have superstars on your team doesn’t mean that games will be handed to you. You actually have ot make the effort and shoot the puck whenever you can instead of trying to be cute about it.

I even witnessed a few times where Makar had what looked to be a good shooting opportunity but he didn’t take it. That confused me so much.

It was a complete disaster on Friday night in Edmonton, but now it’s time to look forward as the Avalanche head home to host the Dallas Stars.