They had seen this before at Ball Arena. The Avs were knocking on the door, slowly establishing more offensive zone time. A scoring chance here and there. Once Colorado gets one, a second sometimes feels inevitable, especially for an underdog nursing a two-goal lead.
But the Avalanche couldn’t muster a goal. Instead, Cale Makar mishandled the puck in the defensive zone, ex-Av Tyson Jost flicked a difficult pass to Rasmus Dahlin, and Dahlin’s shot beat an unimpeded Alexandar Georgiev off the post. The snowball of momentum collapsed. It was 3-0 Buffalo late in the second period, en route to a 4-2 Avalanche loss Thursday.
“(Cale) skates it out, trying to do the right thing,” coach Jared Bednar said. “… He kind of gets jumped and surprised a little bit, and the turnover ends up in the back of our net. … It’s a mistake those guys generally don’t make.”
The Avs (15-11-2) had six multi-goal comeback wins from the beginning of January to the end of their Stanley Cup run last season, but they haven’t pulled one off yet in the first 28 games of their title defense. So an early 2-0 deficit against the young Sabres presented a mighty obstacle, but an attainable one to overcome with plenty of time.
Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen had other ideas. Despite being outshot by 20, the Sabres’ goalie made 40 saves in a stellar performance two weeks after the Avalanche scored five on him in Buffalo. Colorado fired 83 shot attempts.
Dahlin’s goal deterred the Avalanche’s comeback hopes, and it also illustrated a key discrepancy separating the Avs from other teams at this juncture, even lesser ones. Dahlin became the sixth Buffalo player to reach double-digit goals this season. Colorado still has only one scorer in double digits: Mikko Rantanen, who potted his 20th with 11:40 remaining in the third period.
That breakthrough goal came on a 2-on-1 rush, at the end of a well-timed pass from Valeri Nichushkin. It allowed the Avs to avoid their fourth shutout loss, and it kept Rantanen at a 58.6-goal pace.
The only problem is that Rantanen has scored 23.5% of the team’s goals — more than a third of the way through the season.
Aside from that, Colorado’s best players were defeated by Buffalo’s for most of the night. Before Makar’s giveaway led to Dahlin’s goal, a defensive lapse by Rantanen allowed Buffalo wunderkind Tage Thompson to skate into the slot and juke around Georgiev for the first goal. Thompson had his 24th of the season, 54 seconds into the game.
“Long shift to start the game,” Rantanen said. “Get tired and then your mind is not there, and then a big body just jumps by you. It’s hard to catch (Thompson) from behind. And good goal scorer, so he had me burned there.”
The first shift was no anomaly; Rantanen played 27 minutes of ice time, a hefty load for even a top forward.
“When the rest of your lineup’s playing pretty good, those numbers are down a little bit — 23 range, which some of those guys are used to playing,” Bednar said. “… Tonight I didn’t like part of our lineup, so those (top) guys end up playing more. Especially when you’re chasing a game.”
Sabres top-line winger Alex Tuch out-muscled defenseman Devon Toews in front of the net for positioning and a 2-0 lead at 7:08 of the first period.
“Sleeping. Sleeping early,” Bednar said. “We didn’t manage the puck properly. Didn’t defend hard enough. Not enough intensity to our game. After the — I don’t know, call it first 12 minutes of the game, we start to get going. Everything starts turning in our direction. Just couldn’t score.”
Bednar was happy with the Avs’ chances, just not the finishing. They failed on two power plays, bringing their drought to 0-for-17, coinciding with the loss of Nathan MacKinnon to an upper-body injury.
But Evan Rodrigues scored in his first game back in the lineup after missing nine games with a lower-body injury. Bednar had liked Rodrigues’ energy all night. Still, the goal was too little, too late with Georgiev pulled, and Buffalo quickly answered with an empty-netter with 57 seconds left.
