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Tenuous hold on playoff spot with one game remaining before break |
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Rick Sadowski
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The Avalanche have one more game to try and get it right before taking off for nine days with the NHL All-Star break and league-mandated five-day break following Wednesday’s game against Minnesota at the Pepsi Center.
They won’t play again after until a Feb. 2 home game with Vancouver.
The Avalanche are still clinging to a Western Conference playoff spot – the second wild card – despite losing two of the past three games, five of seven (2-5-0) and 11 of 14 (3-9-2).
But the Wild have moved one point ahead into third place in the Central Division, and even last-place Chicago is within nine points.
“We’ve been playing really well lately,” Nathan MacKinnon said after practice Tuesday. “Our record’s not great, but we’ve been outplaying a lot of top teams in the league the last couple weeks, so we’re going on the right track and hopefully we can get a win going into the break.
“We need the points. We need to beat them and move ahead of them going into the break.”
Coach Jared Bednar no longer reveals the lineup, and it’s hard to guess whether Semyon Varlamov or Philipp Grubauer will start against the Wild since neither has been effective during the Avalanche’s slide.
Varlamov, who’s started six games in a row, is 13-12-5 with a 2.82 goals-against average and .908 save percentage. Grubauer hasn’t played since Jan. 8 when he allowed six goals on 20 shots in a 7-4 loss at Winnipeg. He is 9-5-3 with a 3.29 goals-against average and .895 save percentage.
“We’ve been trying to find the guy who’s going to seize it, grab it and get us some wins,” Bednar said. “We started with a little bit of a different approach, kind of laying out a week at a time, 10 days at a time, who was going to get the start. We saw some good goaltending, then I think it’s just been average.
“Grubi got a chance to get the net for a while Varly was out for five or six (games), and we didn’t get results. Now Varly’s been back in and we’re still not getting results, so it’s going to get competitive in our net. That’s the way we want it.
“I’ve kind of changed my approach to it now. Now I’m going game by game, pick a goalie that we think is going to give us the best chance to win the hockey game and reassess for the next start and see if we still feel that way after the previous game and, hopefully, one of these guys can get hot.
“Hopefully, they both can get hot, but we need one of them to get hot here first and win us some hockey games and help steal us some games if we’re not playing well.”
Varlamov gave up two bad goals Monday in the Avalanche’s 4-1 loss to Nashville, when Predators coach Peter Laviolette became the 20th NHL coach and second born in the U.S. to win 600 games. John Tortorella has 603 wins.
Nick Bonino beat Varlamov through the 5-hole after an awful giveaway by defenseman Nikita Zadorov, and the goalie never moved from along the right post as Viktor Arvidsson raced down right wing, continued behind the goal and scored a wraparound into a wide-open net for a 2-0 lead.
Nashville’s Pekka Rinne, meanwhile, had 35 saves. Alexander Kerfoot redirected in Samuel Girard’s shot, slicing the deficit to 2-1, but that was it.
"The difference in the hockey game was their goalie, it's that simple,” Bednar said. “I have no problem with the way we played. We made a couple mistakes, they capitalized. They made lots of mistakes too, we didn't capitalize. To me, the difference was Rinne."
The Avalanche outshot the Predators 13-7 in a scoreless first period that included two early power plays. They finished 0-for-4 with the man advantage and Rinne stopped Matt Nieto on a penalty shot at 3:30 of the second period before Nashville took a 2-0 lead.
“We played good, we just couldn’t bury our chances,” MacKinnon said. “Rinne was awesome last night. He’s such a good goalie. He won the Vezina (Trophy) for a reason last year. I think if we score first, it’s a different game.”
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