Photo: Bridget Samuels/Flickr
The Avs will remain in 15th place in the Western Conference, for another couple days at least. The Minnesota Wild continue to have the Avs number, as they earned their second win over the vs this season, and fifth point.
Minnesota scored first. Matt Hunwick lost the puck to his mark, Paul Stastny failed to pick up his man, and Varlamov let in the shot. I would have liked to see Varls have that one, but if the players in front of him had been better, he wouldn’t have even faced a shot. Late in the first, on a power play, P.A. Parenteau scored with a kind of bizarre shot. In the second, Minnesota scored three quick goals, in the middle of the period, with an Avs goal in the mix from Gabriel Landeskog. More defensive errors led to Minnesota’s goals, and Varlamov just wasn’t able to make that one key save. Parenteau picked up his second goal of the game halfway through the third, but the final goal was an empty netter for the Wild.
The Avs have 22 games left this season. They need 32 more points by my estimation in order to get into the playoffs. 14-4-4 is the worst record they can have to earn that number of points in that number of games. It’s a tall order, and it’s not going to happen if the team keeps winning two and then losing three. The Colorado Avalanche need to put their big boy pants on, suck it up, and get wins. Varlamov hasn’t been his best self the past couple of games, and he needs to pick it up and play to his capabilities. The team needs more dirty goals, more players going to the net, and they need to backcheck as if there’s no tomorrow. If the team didn’t play so poorly in their own zone, they wouldn’t find themselves chasing so much.
Other Thoughts
-Greg Zanon may have had an assist, but he played poorly. Why did we switch him out with O’Byrne? Oh, because O’Byrne’s been taking bad penalties. What did Zanon do tonight? Take two bad penalties, and fall on his butt because he’s a poor skater.
-Erik Johnson had a really good game.
-Ryan O’Reilly and Gabriel Landeskog found themselves back together late in the game, and I imagine that we’ll see them together again next game.
-Chuck Kobasew and Cody McLeod each got into a fight.
