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Five things to watch when the Calgary Flames take on the Colorado Avalanche in Game 4:
1. Slowing down Nathan MacKinnon
The first three games served as a refresher as to why MacKinnon was able to seriously contend for the Hart Trophy just a season ago. He is a dominant player who, when in full flight, is borderline unstoppable. Right now he's in full flight. Prior to last night's Game 4's, MacKinnon led the entire playoffs in shot attempts (33), shots on goal (27), and scoring chances (20).
The Flames haven't had an answer for him, and it's clear adjustments need to be made. Be it stacking the blueline, pressuring from the middle to force him into a defender at the line, or simply challenging more as opposed to backing off and allowing a free entry at top speed, the Flames must do something different. I don't think the results could be any worse.
2. Offense from the defense
One thing I've noticed: the Avalanche defense is jumping into the play a lot to create extra layers of offense. I took to the numbers to see if my observations checked out and, well, they did. No defense core accounted for a higher expected goals number – or more scoring chances – than Colorado's over the first three games.
Avalanche forwards are flying through the neutral zone and generating a ton of controlled entries. Once they enter the final third, they're often waiting a second or two and hitting trailers that are coming in at full speed. Calgary's forwards need to do a better job of accounting for that.
3. Special teams, special teams, special teams
There have been 32 power plays in this series. 32! That equates to 10.66 per game. I understand I'm focusing on this over and over but special teams really are more important in this series than any other. Given how badly the Flames are struggling at 5v5 (45.74 CF%, 43.66 xGF%), it's especially imperative they find a way to do some damage in extra-man situations. That could very well be their key back into the series.
4. Another debut
Game 3 the Avalanche dressed a young, puck-moving defenseman (Cale Makar) in a playoff game for the first time and he an immediate impact, scoring the eventual game-winning-goal while logging ~15 solid minutes.
The Flames will be hoping for similar results tonight as they give Juuso Valimaki his first taste of playoff hockey. He spent most of his regular season minutes alongside Rasmus Andersson and they did find some success, controlling ~56% of the chances and ~52% of the expected goals. I'm not sure Oscar Fantenberg was the problem but I certainly don't have a problem with giving Valimaki a look and hoping for a spark. We'll see if he can provide one.
5. Will Mike Smith hold up?
That was the big question heading into the series. So far, so good. Even after the disaster that was Game 3, which was not at all on Smith, he still owns a .926 save percentage this series. With that said, he faced more shots over the first three games than any goaltender in the playoffs and this is the same guy that posted a sub .900 SV% over more than 40 regular season appearances. The Flames are asking a ton of Smith, and I'm skeptical he'll continue to hold up if that's the case. They need to be better in front of him or things could really get ugly.
Here are the projected lineups:
Calgary
Johnny Gaudreau - Sean Monahan - Elias Lindholm
Matthew Tkachuk - Mikael Backlund - Michael Frolik
Sam Bennett - Mark Jankowski - James Neal
Andrew Mangiapane - Derek Ryan - Garnet Hathaway
Mark Giordano - T.J. Brodie
Noah Hanifin - Travis Hamonic
Juuso Valimaki - Rasmus Andersson
Mike Smith
Colorado (via DailyFaceoff.com)
Gabriel Landeskog - Nathan MacKinnon - Alexander Kerfoot
Colin Wilson - Carl Soderberg - Mikko Rantanen
Matt Nieto - Derick Brassard - J.T. Compher
Gabriel Bourque - Tyson Jost - Matt Calvert
Ian Cole - Erik Johnson
Nikita Zadorov - Tyson Barrie
Patrik Nemeth - Cale Makar
Philipp Grubauer
Puck drop is just after 10:00 eastern.
Numbers via NaturalStatTrick.com or tracked manually
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