Avalanche Game Five Plus/Minus: Lab Lehky, Even Strength Mittelstadt

It’s time for playoff plus/minus! As with every game, you take the good with the bad, so time to take a look at the pluses and the minuses in Game Four against the Dallas Stars for the Colorado Avalanche.

They’re not dead just yet…

+ Artturi Lehkonen

It’s not just the goals, although he managed to score (another) huge goal. It’s not just the assists, although he managed to pick up the assist doing most of the work on the insurance goal that finished off the game.

It’s everything else, or, to make it even more simple, everything. With the game on the line and under three minuets left, who else is Jared Bednar putting on the ice? And, as he usually does, Lehkonen rewards Bednar’s faith by working his butt off, putting his body in front of shots, and diving to make sure the puck gets out of the zone.

He’s not as talented as a Mikko Rantanen or a Nathan MacKinnon, but he does everything right and he’s plenty talented in his own right. That’s why he feels like a player that a hockey coach built in a lab. That head coach might have been Jared Bednar.

+ The Powerplay

Colorado played quite well at even strength, I felt. They were generating chances and they weren’t exactly giving up a ton at their end. The problem was that they couldn’t find the back of the net to stay in the game.

That’s where the powerplay, which has struggled since Game One, came up so clutch. Who knows where this game goes if the Avalanche don’t get one at the end of the first period. Same goes for the goal towards the end of the second. In the third period, the even strength offense came alive, but those two powerplay goals allowed the Avalanche to hang around in the game and get things going.

+ Cale Makar

I don’t know what else to say about Makar that I didn’t already write about late last night.

When he’s doing the things he was doing at the offensive blueline in Game Five, there’s no one that can stop him. He pulled a nearly identical move off on 1/4 of the Stars forward core, and there was nothing they could do about it. He’s a competitor, and that showed up last night.

“His skill shines through and his competitiveness shines through tonight,’’ Jared Bednar said after the game.

– Devon Toews

It’s understandable that he struggled a little bit, as it didn’t sound like he was close to 100%, but it sure looked like it. When you’re sick, you get tired a lot quicker, and tired players make mistakes. That’s what happened when Toews, without a ton of pressure on him, just shot the puck out of play. I’m not sure what it is about Dallas and that penalty, but it’s the third one the Avalanche have taken at American Airlines Center this series. In the third, his exit pass missed everyone and created the third Stars goal.

You’d much rather have an even 80% Toews in the lineup over Caleb Jones (no offense to Jones), but it was clear he was struggling lats night.

– Losing Trenin

The Avalanche don’t exactly have a ton of center depth to begin with, as Yakov Trenin wasn’t even playing center full-time when he got to the team, so losing him hurts quite a bit. Bednar and company had been moving him around in games, as he spent a lot of time with Colton and Wood when the team needed a different look on that line

The explanation for his injury was a little strange, but when you consider he was hurt very early in the game and wasn’t able to come back, it feels like it might be somewhat serious. My assumption, given that he’s a center, is that Chris Wagner would get the call in his place, but we’ll see.

(or dress Gabriel Landeskog just so you can have him on the bench)

+ Splitting Up MacKinnon and Rantanen

It had to happen at some point, because the combination of the two of them together just wasn’t getting enough done to justify it continuing with the series on the line.

Is it possible the Avalanche would have won this game with these two together? Yeah, it’s definitely possible, but it gave them a new look and Colorado played well with them separated. Since you won, you have to keep it going. The second line, in particular, had really strong numbers.

About that…

+ Casey Mittelstadt

What makes what Casey Mittelstadt is doing so impressive is that it’s pretty much all coming at even strength. He’s not on the top powerplay unit, which on the Avalanche means he might as well not be on the powerplay at all, because that second unit doesn’t play.