Couldn't catch the game tonight but reading this thread was quite a rollercoaster:
- Girard is a future Norris winner and he's so awesome. He's everyone's favorite player now.
- (20 min later) Girard is "meh" and "having an off night". Turnover machine.
I think we are much better than this team, hopefully Grub starts off strong. Easy win.
Well, now we're ****ed. Thanks...
Couldn't catch the game tonight but reading this thread was quite a rollercoaster:
- Girard is a future Norris winner and he's so awesome. He's everyone's favorite player now.
- (20 min later) Girard is "meh" and "having an off night". Turnover machine.
Wellllll that didn't go well, but it's Game Three. There's still some kinks to work out.
Still some positives. I thought Grubs was solid. Not amazing, but solid. He certainly wasn't the reason Colorado lost.
MacKinnon continues to be a gamebreaker, and the 2nd power play unit continues to impress.
Also, even in a losing effort with an absolutely putrid first period, they aren't really so much one-and-done in the attacking zone. They're much more able to sustain drives than they were last season. I also thought that despite them not scoring, the 2nd line was very impressive, especially Wilson, who was just plain flying out there.
My biggest concern right now is that top power play unit, and the fact that they still don't generate near enough traffic in front of the net. Onto Buffalo then...
It should be noted that while the Avs did not play a great game, they came up against Bobrovsky in Vezina form tonight. If he gave up a single rebound tonight, I don't think I saw it.
My biggest issue so far is the lack of defensive organization below the hash marks.
There’s three opposing forwards and one of them seems to always be open. Somebody isn’t doing their job, and a few of these goals seem to have been the centre leaving too early or simply watching his man from 5 feet away.
MacKinnon has been the biggest culprit of this. Needs to be corrected, it’s just sloppy execution of fundamentals.
Also, wasn’t super impressed with Grubauer. I know he made some nice saves, but he could’ve easily had another 2-3 go by him that hit the post. First game so I’ll hold my judgement for a bigger sample size.
I always love reading GDTs after we lose.
They coasted for a bit even when they were down 2:3 in the third. Therefore I hated that period. I get that they know they are a great team but they are not good enough to not put the work in and still win.I do like the resilience they showed on the second. I feel like the third period could have gone either way if they hadn't run into Vezinaovsky.
Regarding the #1 powerplay I don't think Jost is working on it at all. Not sure I even blame him. There just doesn't seem to be a really logical fit for him on the ice, and he spends most of his time sort of floating around in the middle. Unless the Avs want to adopt a 'throw everything at the net' strategy and have Jost sit in front with Landeskog looking for deflections / rebounds, I don't see him working out there.
I know they like having Compher on the second unit because they want a right handed shot out there on it, but I also think they need another right handed shot on the top unit with how they've set it up. The Rants / MacK connection (both ways) has become quite obvious, teams know to shut it down. Opening up the guy in the slot (Jost) as a genuine one-timer threat could change that dynamic, force the opposition to spread out a bit more. But since Jost is a lefty that just won't happen. MacK plays too high up on the wall most of the time that he realistically isn't in a position to feed pucks into Jost for a one-timer between the faceoff dots or closer to the crease - and if MacK does move down he loses the cross ice pass to Rantanen, makes it more difficult to move it back to Barrie, etc.
What they should do IMO is what the Capitals sort of did on their powerplay unit. The ran it through Backstrom much of the time (Rantanen) about halfway up the right boards, they had Carlson at the point (Barrie), they had Ovie (MacK) sitting on the left side primed for a one timer from Carlson or Backstrom (Rants and Barrie), and they had Oshie (should be Compher IMO) sliding around in the slot to find an open space so that Backstrom could slide it right into his wheelhouse for the quick one timer if the opposition focused too much on preventing cross ice passes to Carlson and Ovie. In the playoffs that Backstrom / Oshie connection opened up several times and they consistently made the opposition pay. Leave Landy where he is in front of the net. Having a righty out in the slot like Compher also means that if Landy fans out to the right side like he often does (and then tries to stuff it in short side by cutting into the crease), he now has an additional right handed option sitting in the slot in Compher who he can feed it to for a one-timer. MacK really isn't using Jost anyways, so I don't think it'd change how he operates at all. We actually saw MacK try to do this against Philly where he rushed into the slot at one point, literally five feet beside Jost, and Landy or Rants, forget who, fed it straight to him for the one timer 15-20 feet outside of the crease. Basically, have Compher there to do that continuously while leaving MacK wide open on the other side still.
On the other hand we could do the opposite or inverse and have MacK and Girard as the Backstrom Carlson and use Rantanen as Ovi and Jost as Oshi. Either that or the top unit could maybe move their feet a bit more like the second unit does. Landy and Jost do almost nothing the entire time.
Regarding the #1 powerplay I don't think Jost is working on it at all. Not sure I even blame him. There just doesn't seem to be a really logical fit for him on the ice, and he spends most of his time sort of floating around in the middle. Unless the Avs want to adopt a 'throw everything at the net' strategy and have Jost sit in front with Landeskog looking for deflections / rebounds, I don't see him working out there.