Avs not falling back on injury excuse amid recent skid

While the sky is not falling down around the NHL’s early-season darling Colorado Avalanche, the club has returned to Earth after a league-best 8-1-1 start.

Since sweeping its first homestand and ending its first road trip at 4-1-1, the Avs have dropped four consecutive games — including three straight at home and the team’s most lopsided defeat on Saturday, 3-0 at the hands of the Arizona Coyotes.

Incidentally, Colorado’s regression back to the mean coincides with the loss of all-stars Mikko Rantanen and Gabe Landeskog.

With only Rantanen out of the lineup, the Avalanche are 1-2. But with both he and Landeskog out of the mix, Colorado’s lost three straight.

However, Avs veteran defenseman Erik Johnson told 104.3 The Fan Insider and Colorado Hockey Now’s Adrian Dater the club isn’t falling back on the excuse that two of their top guys are out with injury.

“You have to look in the mirror and be better,” Johnson said. “When you’re down some top players, the easy thing to do, I think, is to just be, ‘It’s OK. These guys are out.’ But you can’t do that.

“You’ll be in trouble really quick if you do. The mindset has to be to step up in those guys’ absences.”

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Avs hampered by slow starts

In three of the past four games (all losses), Colorado stumbled out of the gate.

At home against the Anaheim Ducks and Dallas Stars last week, the Avs were unable to climb out of 2-0 deficits early. And on Saturday in Arizona, Colorado fell behind 3-0 — the eventual final score — just five minutes into the second period.

After the loss to the Stars on Friday, Avs head coach Jared Bednar said,
“We weren’t mentally engaged in the game. You’re not going to win if you don’t play 60 minutes. I don’t care who it’s against.”

And while Bednar seemingly had a softer touch after Sunday’s loss to the Coyotes, forward Matt Nieto called upon his team to pick things up early.

“We can’t expect to start like that and end up with the result that we want,” Nieto said. “We’re digging ourselves in a hole early and even if we come on, playing from behind like that is tough to do in this league.”

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Up next

The Avs head to Dallas on Tuesday to take on former Denver Pioneers head coach Jim Montgomery and the Stars before returning home for a two-game homestand against the Nashville Predators and Columbus Blue Jackets.

Colorado then heads out on the road for much of the month of November, riding a swing through Canada starting next Tuesday in Winnipeg and wrapping up Nov. 21 in Minnesota.