After defeating the Toronto Maple Leafs on Sunday thanks to Brock Nelson’s hat trick, the Colorado Avalanche continued their road trip today against the Ottawa Senators, losing 5-2.
Let’s recap tonight’s action.
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Issue 1
During this period, neither team scored. The Senators showed a lot of momentum and kept it going throughout the game as it looked like AV couldn’t spend any time in the offensive zone at all. In fact, Colorado ended up trailing 14-4 in the period.
Second issue
After a scoreless first period, the Senators got on the board first when Nick Cousins got into the Avalanche zone behind the defense and managed to get the puck past Mackenzie Blackwood to give Ottawa a 1-0 lead.
Parker Kelly responded for AV, who had 10 shots on goal, making the Sens pay for a poor turnover in their own zone, as he was able to jump on a free puck and beat James Reimer cleanly to tie the game at 1-1.
Less than a minute after Colorado tied the game, they conceded another goal to Ottawa when Ridley Gregg chased a puck into the AV zone and successfully capitalized on a Blackwood turnover.
The third issue
Just when you’d expect to see Colorado come out firing and try to tie the game again, they did the opposite, giving up a goal to Claude Giroux early in the third quarter to make it 3-1 Ottawa.
Valeri Nichushkin made things interesting shortly after Giroud’s goal when Artturi Lehkonen found him low in front of the net and Nichushkin fired a backhand shot over Reimer to make it 3-2 for his first goal of 2026.
Despite this momentum, AV was unable to equalize as the goalie was pulled, and also gave up two garbage time goals, one by Brady Tkachuk and one by Tim Stutzler, both of which were empty-net goals, with the final score being 5-2.
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Main points
As we get closer to the NHL Olympic break, it makes sense that this team might be thinking ahead to the break and games, but in my opinion, that’s no excuse for not at least trying to finish this part of the season strong. All in all, the effort in this game was frustrating to say the least. As written before, it seemed like every time you had the puck in the first and a lot of the second period, you immediately turned the puck over and the puck was right back in your own zone. Obviously, if you can’t handle the puck in the offensive zone, it’s hard to win the game, and even if you can handle the puck in the offensive zone, it’s hard to win the game if you can’t effectively put the puck in the net. Your performance will pick up quickly tomorrow, so hopefully Team AV can forget about this game and take on the Canadiens quickly.
Coming soon
It won’t take long for AV to turn things around as they take on the Montreal Canadiens in the second leg of a back-to-back tomorrow. Puck drop is at 5:00 PM MT.