Blues crush slumping Avalanche, who have issues to fix

If there were one or two obvious issues for the Colorado Avalanche to fix, this current slump would be pretty easy to explain away.

Instead, there are a lot of smaller fires to put out instead of one large one. And all of them were a problem Saturday night when the Avs were embarrassed in an 8-2 loss to the St. Louis Blues at Ball Arena. It was the club’s fifth loss in seven games, and the fourth time it’s lost by four-plus goals.

“Not good enough. It’s just guys quitting and not doing what they’re supposed to be doing, feeling sorry for themselves,” said an obviously frustrated Jared Bednar.

The Avs coach called the final 20 minutes a joke and the worst period he’s seen from his club.

“There’s no other explanation for it,” Bednar said when asked about he and players saying they quit in the third. “Piss-poor execution. Guys giving up all over the ice.”

Colorado’s power play entered Saturday at 20th in the NHL, converting 17.4% of the time. The Avs had a power play in the second period against the Blues while trailing 3-0.

For about 75 seconds, the power play looked great. Nathan MacKinnon, Mikko Rantanen and Cale Makar all had quality looks, and the Avs created five shot attempts. Then Valeri Nichushkin dug the puck out of a scrum near the right circle but lost control of it.

That led to an odd-man jailbreak rush the other way. MacKinnon hustled back to try and turn the 3-on-1 into a 3-on-2, but Pavel Buchnevich deflected a centering pass past Alexandar Georgiev anyway, and suddenly the Avs went from a chance to get back in the contest to another level of frustration.

The exclamation point for the Blues came with back-to-back power-play goals in the third period. St. Louis came into the game 32nd in the NHL with one goal on the man advantage this season. Brayden Schenn’s third goal of the night brought a smattering of hats onto the ice from the opposing fans while Georgiev exited in favor of backup Ivan Prosvetov.

“I mean, a lot of things have to go wrong to lose (8-2),” Makar said. “It’s a tough one. … I think we want to be good (defensively) but I think the work is late. We’re not working in the early moments and we’re not able to support other guys, whether it’s in the D-zone or the O-zone.

“We’re not all pistons working together right now. We’re all kind of one man separate (from each other). There’s just no flow to it.”

Georgiev’s play since the early part of the season remains a concern as well. Avs coach Jared Bednar admitted earlier this week that his No. 1 goaltender hasn’t been as sharp, and the numbers agree.

This game was a perfect example of how the team has yielded too many quality chances in front of him at times, and there were goals he certainly was not at fault for. But there were multiple goals that he’d like back, as well.

There are issues up front as well. Colorado’s stars are producing, but the second line is not at even strength. Bednar split up MacKinnon and Rantanen, moving the latter to the second line. It didn’t help, and that line was on the ice for two of St. Louis’ three goals in the opening period, including the one with 1.7 seconds left.

With no Artturi Lehkonen in the lineup, the Avs were short one of their four best forwards. While the third line continued to play well, the new additions that were expected to add scoring depth, particularly Tomas Tatar and Jonathan Drouin, have struggled to produce. They have combined for no goals and six assists.