Recap: Injury-riddled Avalanche fall to the Tampa Bay Lightning

The Avalanche lose 5-2 against the Lightning as injuries run wild.

Honestly, I think that’s about how a majority of people expected that game to go. The Colorado Avalanche lost against the Tampa Bay Lightning tonight by a final score of 5-2. Let’s take a look at how it all went down.

First Period

The Bolts got out to a really fast start tonight. First, Nikita Kucherov would get Tampa Bay started with a feed from Brayden Point. Point would take the puck behind the Avalanche net, while Kucherov would float into the middle of the ice, completely unguarded. From there, Point was able to find Kucherov with a great pass to the middle of the ice. That one’s pretty easy, and it’s 1-0 Lightning.

Jake Guentzel would then give Tampa Bay a 2-0 lead, with an assist from Kucherov. On this play, Kucherov would take the puck behind the Colorado net. Guentzel would trail Kucherov into the zone, who would hit him with a nice little bank pass of sorts, and Guentzel isn’t one to miss from right in front of the net.

Tampa Bay would add to their lead with a goal from Conor Geekie. Initially, the Bolts would get a 3-on-2 rush into the zone, and Geekie would get set up on the backdoor. Anthony Cirelli would find him with a cross-crease pass, giving Tampa a 3-0 lead.

Colorado would finally breakthrough before the end of the first period, however, courtesy of a goal from Ivan Ivan. This goal would also come on the power play. The Avs would start out moving the puck around up high in the zone, and Cale Makar would eventually end up with the puck. Makar then walked into the zone and managed to find Ivan in the middle of the ice, who redirected the puck to make the score 3-1 in favor of Tampa Bay.

Second Period

Guentzel would grab his second goal of the night at the 6:28 mark in the second period, restoring Tampa Bay’s three-goal lead. Honestly, there’s not a lot to say about this goal, simply because at the end of the day it’s just a pretty unlucky goal. Point would initially shoot this puck, which would go off the post. The puck would go straight to Guentzel, who made no mistake and cleaned up on the back door.

Third Period

Makar would get a goal in the third to at least make things interesting in the third. The setup on this goal is pretty simple, as Makar would just collect the puck off a pass from Mikko Rantanen. He let it fly from the top of the zone, and the puck found its way to the back of the net.

Tampa would tack on an empty net goal, giving you the final score of 5-2.

Takeaways

Honestly, this loss is one that is kind of hard to gauge how bad it truly was, due to factors outside of the game itself. Starting with the obvious, injuries are currently running wild on this team. Ross Colton was announced to have a broken foot ahead of tonight’s game, and Miles Wood was also ruled out for a few days. Adding them to the already existing list of players resulted in Colorado missing six out of their top nine forwards tonight. That is an absurd amount of talent to be missing.

Losing never feels great, and I’m not at all arguing that you have to feel great about tonight by any means. But, the team that was iced tonight is by no means the one that would be iced on any given night, given the choice of course, and they currently do not have the choice. Reinforcements are on their way, hopefully, sooner rather than later, and things will get better at one point or another for this Colorado team. For the moment, to take a line from Ted Lasso, be a goldfish and prepare to the best of your current abilities for the next game.

Upcoming

Colorado heads out for a quick trip to Music City on November 2 as they get their first look at the Nashville Predators this year. Puck drop is at 6:00 p.m. MT.