It’s slipping away, folks. The Avalanche are looking more and more like a team that will need another Herculean run to make the playoffs. With yet another 1-goal regulation loss (our 11th, 2nd most in the NHL), the Avs dropped to 10th in the West, 4 points behind Vancouver and Nahsville in the 8th seed, and just 4 points ahead of 13th place. Even if the team does pull it together and get in, Colorado’s special teams play would likely sink us quickly in the playoffs. And, truthfully, there haven’t been very many indications that this team is even interested in making a strong playoff push.
The team is almost completely healthy up frontfor the first time in months, with Joe Sakic returning to the lineup last night, leaving only one forward - Cody McCormick - on the IR. Sakic, playing with Wojtek Wolski on th left and, at times, Milan Hejduk, David Jones and Ben Guite at right wing, looked good although it seemed clear that he’s not yet back to his usual self. Sakic played a conservative amount of minutes (15:24), and did set up the Avs 2nd goal with a great centering pass to Ben Guite. Yes, he did play the point on the powerplay and no, it didn’t magically turn our powerplay into the realm of barely competent.
The Avs started out strong in the game. Tyler Arnason (who else?) scored just 27 seconds in. Arnason has 10 goals, 9 assists and is a +9 against the Oilers in the last two seasons. He has just 14 goals and is -16 against the rest of the league. I think it’s clear that we need to trade him to Edmonton. Now. Colorado made it 2-0 12 minutes later with the Guite goal, and it seemed like we might be rolling towards an easy night.
Nope. Edmonton chipped their way back into it. I know that there are some out there who think the Avs started to sit on that 2-goal lead, but I didn’t feel that was the case here. I think this is more a case of Edmonton playing well than Colorado sitting back. The Oilers came out and played extremely hard in the 2nd period, outshooting the Avs 8-3. They also outscored the Avs 2-0, knotting the game at 2. The Avalanche pushed hard in the 3rd to get the go-ahead goal, but a big defensive miscue gave the Oilers a break and a 3-2 lead. Mathieu Garon turned aside all 15 shots in the 3rd to send the Avalanche to their 6th loss in the last 7 games, with 4 of those losses being by a margin of…altogether now…one goal.
While the forwards are getting healthy, our defense is suffering from some key injuries and leaks are starting to spring up all over the place (trade deadline watchers had to take a deep breath when John-Michael Liles limped off after blocking a shot, but he returned quickly to the game). With Jeff Finger and Brett Clark out, this squad is having some trouble.
On all three Edmonton goals, there was only one defenseman in position. On the first goal, Kyle Cumiskey started chasing around players all over the defensive zone. I don’t know if he was confused with his time at forward (thanks Q!), but he was nowhere near where he should have been (heck, he wasn’t even chasing down players on his own side of the ice). His, um, travels left Joe Sakic to try to cover Dustin Penner in the paint, while Scott Hannan worked (or was worked by) a hard-working Sam Gagner. Later, the Avs broke out on what looked to be a 3 on 2 rush. Unfortunately, Curtis Glencross made a great play to steal the puck from Ian Laperriere at center ice. The Avs turned around to get back defensively, but the guy leading the rush was Hannan; he wasn’t able to get back into the play leaving Liles and Andrew Brunette to fend for themselves defensively. Edmonton scored.
The 3rd goal was probably the worst of all. Robert Nilsson made a cross-ice pass to Andrew Cogliano. Cumiskey was in pretty good position at the blueline. But, instead of going for the body, Cumiskey went for the steal. It was a terrible decision, especially in the 3rd period of a tie hockey game. Cumiskey missed the steal, Cogliano had a clear path to the net with Jordan Leopold covering Nilsson. With Jose Theodore hedging towards a centering pass, Cogliano had a relatively easy goal. This goal was an absolute killer - every bit as terrible as the Vrbata faceoff goal of a few weeks ago. Essentially, that’s two points cost by defensive miscues.
Cumiskey is a guy who has a very bright future ahead of him. He’s got some slick moves, and pucks stick to his blade like he’s Lester Hayes. In general, I think he’s more polished defensively than he is offensively, which is a bit surprising considering his size and skill set. But he was flat out terrible defensively tonight, and I think it cost us the game. Besides the two goals, he almost made an ill-advised pass late in the 3rd to Hannan. At the time, Hannan was right in front of Theodore, and he had difficulty handling the dangerous pass. We all have our off nights…let’s hope Cumiskey got it all out of his system last night.
Lines
The lines that started the game are here. The lines (and the pairings) were jumbled throughout the night, especially in the 3rd. Joel Quenneville’s dog house is rather crowded, it seems. Wolski and Milan Hejduk each had just 4 shifts in the 3rd period, while Marek Svatos had just 5.
Quick Hits
- Arnason led both teams with 6 shots
- 14 of the remaining 19 games are against teams above us in the standings. Not that we can beat the teams below us in the standings…
- The Avs won at least 50% of the draws for the third consecutive game.
Next Up
Tomorrow is the trade deadline, and I don’t have the slightest idea what’s going to happen. Tomorrow night, the team plays the first-place Flames.
And one programming note - after the recap of the Calgary game, I’ll be off to St Maarten for some well deserved R&R.
When your defense goes from pretty good to flat out awful when two journeymen defensemen get hurt you have to ask yourself, “Are Clark and Finger that good or is our defense that thin”? I think it’s a little bit of both honestly. I mean, the defense has no AAA guys despite our wish that Hannan was it. So the talent is spread and of that talent it’s all pretty good. Guys like Clark and Finger are better than most would give them credit for but when they are out the whole thing starts to unravel. If we had a defensive core backed by a great defenseman then I think you can suffer injuries to some defenseman and still be OK. With the Avs, losing Clark and Finger was actually losing guys who have played our best consistent hockey on the blue line. Leo and Hannan after 3/4 of the year still look to be getting their sea legs. If Hannan and Leo were playing like a 1st pairing then these two injuries shouldn’t hurt so bad. Good coaches know how to shift out and ride their top pairing to mitigate some weakness on the blue line. I’m not seeing that here, especially on the road with the last shift. To me, Q treats his defensemen like interchangeable pieces now that Clark is out. He’s usually good about getting Guite out and when Clark played he was pretty good about getting him out but now I don’t see the matchups against the other teams most dangerous lines.
In order to hit 95 points the Avs still have to flat out win like 12 to 13 games at this point. If Q misses the playoffs two years in a row with this lineup of players does he stay? Will the injury excuses be enough to keep him?
On the trading deadline… Frei made an excellent point on the radio this morning. The Avs have to make a strong push for Hossa. Inexplicably they went and raised ticket prices for next year. It’s hard for us fans to make judgement calls on Kronke doing what’s right for business. We don’t know what the balance sheet looks like or what their market research supports. But the thing about this ticket hike is that it was really small. It was a few dollars here and there, not some significant hike. So Kronke entertainment has to suffer the wrath of ticket price backlash right when season ticket holders are looking to renew but they aren’t even getting that big of a financial benefit out of it. Why do it? Kronke at this point has to believe that the Avalanche absolutely HAVE to make the playoffs for the revenue. I believe the Avs had some hopes of landing Forsberg for the stretch run and getting a season ticket sale spike by having him back. It may be what netted the ticket hike to begin with. Now, if the Avs miss the playoffs and there’s not excitement about next year the ticket sales are really going to hurt. In that light, I agree with Frei that the Avs absolutely have to make a run for Hossa. Of course there is a ceiling as to what’s too expensive. But, the Avs would be well served to make their very best pitch to land him. It’s true that a veteran blue-liner is probably our best option from a pure hockey point of view. However, as a business Kronke will be looking to create some excitement going in to next season. A new coaching staff isn’t going to sell those tickets. On the hockey sides of things I think Hossa is really a great asset. Not only is he a complete player, but he’s only 29 years old.
I vacilate between wanting Hossa and hoping he rips off another team. Sure, he has great numbers, but he got a lot of his street cred with a pretty good Sens team, then he went to Atlanta, and has played second fiddle to Kovy. He’s REALLY deep in minus territory defensively, and he has a Jagr-like propensity for taking games off. I think the asking price may be too high for a guy who has typically been made better by his linemates, not vice-versa, and hasn’t played in the Western Conference. That’s just me, but whatever.
As for Oilers game, I kinda agree with DD on this to an extent. I don’t think they sat back in the 2nd, and sure they got overworked, but at the same time, they took zero risks once the first goal was scored. Maybe it was the constant jumble of lines, but there was no flow to the offense at all in the 2nd, and too little too late in the 3rd. I just think that the short leash that Q has on all his players is causing more harm than good.
I’m all for Hossa IF you can get him long term. He seems pretty determined to hit the FA market though — why not wait until this offseason instead of giving up Wolski + god knows what else?
Hossa is a superstar only when he wants to be. He’s just as capable of scoring 70 points in a full season as he is scoring 100 points. Like Mike said, he takes games off and it shows. He doesn’t put up 100% effort every time he hits the ice, and that’s what the Avalanche needs more than anything.
I say get Hossa in the off-season. This season is all but over anyway.
let’s get Jagr
[...] Andrew Cogliano’s third-period goal helped the Edmonton Oilers end a three-game losing streak and ruin the return of Joe Sakic to the Colorado lineup by beating the Avalanche 3-2. [...]
I’m sorry but I don’t agree on Hossa. I think he’s playing on the worst defensive team in the NHL and his line-mates consist of some of the worst cherry picking forwards since Tangauy’s sophomore season. Hartley has gone on record many times to say that Hossa is by far his best all around player. Yes, better than Kovulchuk. Here’s one blogger’s opinion on Hossa and his possible last home game played… http://thrasherstalons.blogspot.com/2008/02/last-home-game-for-marian-hossa.html#links
He calls Hossa “..possibly their best defensive forward”. I don’t think there’s any ambiguity in that. No one here would ever accuse Svatos or Hejduk of being confused with our best defensive forward. To say that about a guy who can drop 90 points is pretty remarkable.
I wonder if Sergei Fedorov from 1998 is still available.
And by “1998″ I meant 1996, of course. D’oh!
I trashed Cumiskey a bit in the article, but I neglected to mention my favorite moment from the game - Cumiskey streaking across the net and flying in the air after getting tripped up. Very Bobby Orr like…
WE JUST SIGNED FORSBERG!
pardon the french but bloody hell.
I immediately feel upbeat.
.
…and my ticket price hike comment is trashed. Now it makes sense.
They WILL sell out The Can for the remainder of the season now. Foppa gets to ride into the sunset as an Av…