Colorado is facing a tough climb
After starting season among West’s best, Avs hit a rough patch
Nathan MacKinnon and Colorado Avalanche coach Jared Bednar put their blow-up on the bench last week behind them pretty quickly.
Now if they could figure out a way to put the Avs’ losing ways behind them just as quickly, there would be a lot more smiles in the Colorado dressing room.
“It’s our fault,” MacKinnon said. “Our six-game losing streak (from Dec. 21-Jan. 2), we were tentative, we were not aggressive. We were not a very good team.”
The Avalanche are basically living every team’s mid-season nightmare with the losses piling up. They had dropped nine of10 games, and13 of16, heading into Monday night’s game against the Leafs.
“It felt like at the start (of the slide) the effort wasn’t there, that just because we were in a playoff spot at Christmas, we were done. Our effort went down,” said captain Gabriel Landeskog. “We haven’t been able to put a game together and find ways to win. It’s been frustrating.”
The lowlight, or certainly the spotlight, of this free fall fell squarely on MacKinnon with a verbal outburst he directed at Bednar during game in Calgary last week. MacKinnon believed Bednar should have pulled the goalie earlier in the loss to the Flames, and was seen shouting at the coach.
“We spoke after the game, before I even knew there was a video,” MacKinnon said. “Bed- nar is not sensitive at all. We’ve been losing a lot. Obviously, I can’t be doing that stuff. Frustration. I took it out on the wrong person.”
Neither Bednar nor anyone else would blame MacKinnon for his outburst, which emanates from his competitive nature.
“That’s what makes him so good,” Bednar said. “He’s a fiery guy, an emotional guy. You have to play this game with passion and emotion. He does that on a nightly basis. It’s a non-issue for me.”
Leafs coach Mike Babcock also saw the bright side of MacKinnon’s blow-up.
“Isn’t it an emotional game? Aren’t people supposed to get mad?” Babcock said. “I thought MacKinnon did a great job. They’re both good people that are good at their jobs and they want to win. They got mad, so what?”
The Avs were18-10-6 as of Dec. 19, running with the leaders in the Western Conference. But, thanks to their struggles, they entered Monday seventh in the West, one point ahead of Minnesota, Anaheim and Vancouver.
“It’s a tough test for us right now, what we’re going through,” Landeskog said. “A lot of guys in this dressing room haven’t gone through things like this at this level. Last year, we didn’t have a stretch like this of six weeks without a whole lot of wins. We have to stick together.”
The Leafs, by comparison, had earned 12 points since Dec. 19. If they had earned just four, like the Avs, they would have entered Monday outside of a playoff spot. Babcock is thankful that hasn’t happened, though Toronto took a 2-4-0 run into Monday’s game.
“I say it all the time, your ups have got to be longer than your downs,” Babcock said. “When you go down and things don’t go right, you’ve got to dig in and you’ve got to find a way out of it in a hurry.”
The Avs can be the thankful the West has not been that strong. Anaheim had lost 11 straight before Monday. Edmonton, three points back, had lost seven of 10.
The other teams around them have not been able to make a run.
“It’s been weird lately,” said MacKinnon. “The West isn’t ... it’s tight, fortunately for us. We’ve lost 12 of 15 and we’re still in a playoff spot somehow. We’ll take it.”
The Avalanche have taken the attitude that whatever doesn’t eliminate them from the playoffs can only make them stronger.
“You go through something like this, you dig in, in a bunch of different areas,” Bednar said. “You fix some issues you have as a team, then it seems another one is popping up. It’s been happening for too long. There are no excuses at this point. The result is what we need.
“We went through a similar stretch at the start of the year and came out of it a much better team — the commitment level, the way we worked, attention to detail in our game. Every aspect of our game was real strong and we won a lot of games coming out of that. I’d like to think we can do that again.
“It’s gone on longer than I would have liked. It’s time to put up or shut up.”