The much-needed reinforcements arrived Friday night for the Colorado Avalanche, but another early-season headache also returned.
The Ball Arena crowd seemed primed for a party, but the Avs’ goaltending issues snuffed that out early in a 5-2 loss to the Washington Capitals. Justus Annunen, starting for the first time in five games for the now-injured Alexandar Georgiev, allowed goals on the first two shots he faced and three of the first six before giving way to Trent Miner for his NHL debut.
“(The goalies) weren’t good enough,” Avs coach Jared Bednar said. “For sure (with) Justus. First shot, point shot, no screen. Second one … no good. Third one … didn’t like that one, either.”
Valeri Nichushkin made his season debut after a six-month suspension while in Stage 3 of the NHL-NHLPA player assistance program. Jonathan Drouin and Miles Wood both returned from injuries. The Avs had their six best forwards in the lineup together for the first time since Game 82 of last regular season.
Those six forwards combined for just four shots in the game. Colorado finished with 19 as a team, its lowest total of the season.
“I think they won their battles a little more than us today,” Drouin said. “They kept it more simple.
“No excuses. You’ve got to be ready to play. I don’t care how long I’ve been out. They played better as a team. We have lots of stuff to look at.”
Parker Kelly scored his first goal in an Avalanche uniform just two minutes into this game. Kelly’s turnaround shot from outside the right circle appeared to fool Washington goalie Charlie Lindgren.
The Caps answered with a power-play goal at 4:25. Jakub Vrana’s one-timer from the top of the right circle was Washington’s first official shot on goal in the game.
Connor McMichael, who put one off the post earlier, scored on the Caps’ second shot at 7:48, a one-timer from the top of the offensive zone. McMichael scored his second of the night and 12th of the year 1:53 into the second period, which ended Annunen’s night. McMichael intercepted a pass by Samuel Girard near the Colorado blue line, went by Josh Manson and then beat Annunen with a backhanded shot.
Colorado’s new-look fourth line added a second goal at 4:03 of the second to bring the Avs within a goal at 3-2. Nikolai Kovalenko pounced on a rebound at the top of the crease from a Kelly shot to score his third goal of the season.
The goaltending issues stuck out, but the defense corps struggled with turnovers and the forwards had an off night both shooting and generating chances.
“It was definitely an off night,” Bednar said. “In its simplest form, it looked we were second to the puck all night and our execution was not good.”
Miner stopped the first three shots of his NHL career, including a tricky deflection by Ovechkin, but a turnover at the offensive blue line by Sam Malinski turned into a Jakob Chychrun rush shot from distance that the rookie goalie could not handle at 9:21 of the second.
At that point, the Capitals had scored four times on 10 shots. Even worse, they had only accrued 0.75 expected goals, according to Natural Stat Trick.
Georgiev and Annunen both struggled at the start of the season, but both have also had promising recent results. Annunen had a stretch of six starts in eight games, which included five victories. Georgiev played only once during that time (recently waived Kaapo Kahkonen got the other game), but he came back with a strong four-game surge.
Georgiev did not participate in the morning skate Friday, and the Avalanche recalled Miner prior to this game while announcing that the former is day-to-day with an upper-body injury.
The Avs begin a four-game road trip Monday in Philadelphia. Bednar said that Georgiev will be on the trip with the team.
