Four days after an 8-2 beatdown by the Blues in Colorado’s previous home game left coach Jared Bednar seething, the Avs responded on Wednesday by reversing that score with a no-doubt 8-2 victory over the Ducks at Ball Arena.
The win highlighted by two tip-in goals by Valeri Nichushkin, coupled with a 5-1 shellacking of Seattle on the road on Monday, indicates this year’s Avs might be finally starting to find a consistent identity after an up-and-down opening month.
“They responded great (from the Blues loss),” Bednar said. “It starts with the bounce-back game in Seattle, because the final 40 minutes or so there was probably the best we’ve played all year in terms of the details — making it harder for teams to move, trying to take away their time and space. We continued that from the first period tonight.
“That’s the gear (I’ve been looking for). That’s the way I want us to play. I’ve been waiting for it, and waiting for it, and it just hadn’t come out of our team yet. It was a little bit of embarrassment (from the Blues loss), but there’s more determination in our game on both sides of the puck.”
Colorado controlled the momentum from the opening puck drop, at times skating circles around an Anaheim team that appeared gassed from a cross-country trip following their game in Nashville on Tuesday night. The Avs outshot the Ducks 38-17, including 17-2 in an opening period in which Colorado dominated before suffering a letdown in the final seconds.
Samuel Girard, who missed Monday’s game due to injury, put home a rebound in front of the net to light the lamp first, his first goal of the season.
“That was a nice change of pace, because we haven’t been scoring first lately,” Cale Makar said. “That gave us some momentum.”
Then six minutes later, Colorado went up 2-0 on Devon Toews’ wrister from near the blue line that was tipped in by Nichushkin. Ducks goalie Lukas Dostal had no chance as the puck found the top left shelf off Nichushkin’s stick, making it 2-0 and seem like Colorado was on the early track for a blowout.
But Anaheim made its second shot count by scoring with 33 seconds left in the opening period on a tip-in by Sam Carrick. Suddenly, the visitors were not just weathering the storm, they were back in the game.
That wouldn’t last long.
In the second period, the Avs added on when Logan O’Connor continued his impressive season so far by skating around the back of the net and firing a pass to an open Fredrik Olofsson in the middle of the ice. Olofsson ripped a slap shot underneath Dostal’s oustretched pad and glove to push the score to 3-1 with 5:27 left.
Even with a two-goal advantage at that point, Bednar said he “didn’t love our second period.”
“I felt like we got a little comfortable there and got fortunate a few times with breakdowns I didn’t like in terms of numbers coming at our net,” Bednar said.
The home team then turned in a quality final period that was the antithesis of the four goals the Avs surrendered in the third of their blowout loss to St. Louis on Saturday. Ross Colton scored on a perfectly placed O’Connor give-and-go pass up-ice, as O’Connor hit Colton in stride to put the latter in a one-on-one against Dostal, who was easily beat.
A few minutes later, Nichushkin added another tipped goal on the power play, and the rout was on at 5-1. The Ducks got one back midway through the period off sloppy defense that led to an easy weak-side goal for Max Jones.
But Colorado retaliated with a Joel Kiviranta goal with 6:47 left, when the winger out-hustled two Ducks defenders down the ice and then beat Dostal on the top left shelf. Andrew Cogliano added a goal 21 seconds later to make it a touchdown for Colorado before Toews extended it to 8-2, a season-high offensive output.
All that enabled the Avs (10-5) to put together consecutive wins for the first time in over three weeks, when they started the season 6-0.
“When you start putting together periods like that (third period), and four of our last five that are right on point and the way we want to play… (our identity) should become more and more clear,” Bendar said. “Our lines are starting to carve out their identities, too, especially (the bottom two lines).”
Colorado now heads on a two-game road trip to Dallas (who currently lead the Western division over the second-place Avs) and Nashville before returning home next Wednesday for a matchup against Vancouver.
“Last game (in Seattle) was a big start in terms of creating the direction our team wants to go, and tonight we followed that up,” Andrew Cogliano said. “Now, it’s about continuing that… It’s 15 games in and we don’t want to get too far ahead, but these past two games are picture-perfect of how we want to play as the season goes on.”
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