The Avalanche’s shootout loss to the Lightning showed what’s missing

It was a sold-out crowd on Valentine’s Day and love was in the air.

On Tuesday the Colorado Avalanche were taking on the team they vanquished seven months ago to win the Stanley Cup. The matchup was set up to be an awesome regular season game that felt like a playoff game. For the most part, it held to form.

The Avs took a two-goal lead with a quick score from Artturi Lehkonen and a bank shot by Nathan MacKinnon on a sweet pass from Bowen Byram. The Tampa Bay Lightning fought back with a couple of goals of their own. Denis Malgin scored his first Avs goal ever and made it look easy on the world’s greatest goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy. But a short time later, the Avs surrendered a sloppy goal as Kurtis MacDermid misplayed a puck in his own zone that Vladislav Namestnikov scooped up and put by his countryman Alexandar Georgiev.

Ok, this was a disappointing situation considering the two-goal lead, but there were more than nine minutes left in the game. It was safe to assume more fireworks were to come.

The candle was lit and the ice exploded with end-to-end action. The Avs finished with 46 shots. They fired 50 shots the game before against Florida. It is only the second time in team history the club had 46 or more shots in consecutive games.

The Lightning smoked 35 shots. 81 total shots on net makes for a damn good game.

Avs head coach Jared Bednar agreed, “I liked the game. Both teams played hard…I thought we had opportunities at two nothing to stretch it to three. But overall, like, hard-fought hockey game…had some good chances even late in the game, (JT) Compher especially. Pretty good hockey game.”

Unfortunately, it went to overtime and that’s where the energy left the arena.

Three-on-three hockey is now soccer. It’s all about puck possession. If the play isn’t there, just take the puck out of the zone and try again. This is boring! Both teams were fighting tooth and nail in the last couple of minutes of regulation.

Meanwhile, somebody has got to tell me how there are so many Tampa Bay hockey fans in Denver, Colorado. I need to know! However they got in the building, wherever they came from, they announced their presence loudly which helped heighten the intensity of the game. As Bednar said, it was a pretty good hockey game. But the key word was was.

The OT stunk.

The shootout was even worse.

As soon as both teams realized they had a point, they both stopped playing. In the end, Steven Stamkos scored, and MacKinnon, Mikko Rantanen and Evan Rodrigues didn’t. It was as unsatisfying an ending as the first 60 minutes were a thrill ride. It was obvious that this game was not all that important to either team.

They did what they came to do, get a point.

What happened to the Avalanche team with a killer attitude? What happened to an unrelenting squad that would never be satisfied with this result?

Shockingly, Bednar even complained about the schedule when asked about the back-to-backs the Avs have ahead of them, “I hate it,” groused the world champion coach. “I mean every back-to-back the teams (are) waiting on us, resting. I find it odd that’s the best scheduling you can come up with. We are gonna go to Minny now and they are sitting there waiting on us and then Edmonton will be sitting, resting waiting on us to come back off the road in St. Louis, and the same for next week. It seems strange to me that’s the best they can do…I don’t like playing a rested team every time on a back-to-back, especially against three teams that we are fighting with.”

Yikes, whatever happened to no excuses?

Despite having a good chunk of time off for the All-Star break, this Avs team still feels burned out by what they have had to endure because of all the injuries. Did I mention Malgin scored? The news after the game wasn’t exactly great. Expect to see Josh Manson finally return from injury Wednesday night against Minnesota. Expect Cale Makar back relatively soon. Don’t expect Eric Johnson back for weeks! Pavel Francouz is currently on the shelf. Things are so out of whack right now JT Compher actually got in a real fight during the game. The crowd loved it, but it was just—well—dumb. Andreas Englund and Dermy must have felt left out.

This whole season has been an injury-riddled mess. They really miss their captain, Gabriel Landeskog. There just isn’t a sense of true balance and it feels like this entire season is just slipping away. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. The ups and downs now just seem to be a constant drag of unsatisfying malaise.

The boys aren’t not trying, but the injuries have made it convenient to simply say, “Hey, at least we got a point.” It is time to shake things up. It’s time to make a big-time move and not let this talented core of players fade away into the land of shoulder shrugs and we’ll get ’em next year sighs.

Manson coming back will help. But not only do the Avs need more talent on the ice, but they also need a wake-up call behind the scenes as well. They desperately need a personality injection. Remember Gabe coming out at the victory parade, hammered, shirtless with the Swedish flag draped around him like a cape? They need that type of guy. MacKinnon isn’t exactly Mr. Sunshine. Rantanen must be exhausted from carrying this team as the only truly healthy player this year. Makar doesn’t say boo. Lehkonen is fluent in mumbles. This team is just flat-out flat. There’s no other way to put it. The talent is unquestionable. They have what it takes to make another deep run. Look at what Tampa has done. But it was the Lightning that also brought the fire in both of these teams’ last two matchups, not the Avs.

The time is now to shake things up. The most entertaining moment of the game can’t be Bernie the Mascot dressing up like Rihanna at the Super Bowl halftime show surrounded by marshmallow-dressed dancers. While that bit was hysterical, it should be a footnote, not a highlight. The home team played good enough to get a point. What is disappointing is that it feels like this championship team that is held in such high regard is satisfied with good enough.

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