Penalty Shots, Penalty Kills and Shootouts, Oh My!

Exactly a week after the epic Stadium Series game in which Toffoli scored a hattrick and secured his worth on the trade market (I’m not still crying you are), 90’s night was kind of a let down compared to the awesomeness that was the outdoor game. As Jeff mentioned I was there, and am still suffering from a cold thanks to the freezing weather (literally. Freezing. As an honorary Californian I do not know how to handle that.) Totally worth it. Tonight’s game, not as much.

It started well, the Kings in retro throwback jerseys from the 90’s era, and the Avs on the defensive thanks to several high profile injures. It was pretty chippy, neither team able to assert dominance or control the neutral zone. Then a miracle happened – Austin Wagner did a thing. He was interfered on a breakaway and awarded a penalty shot. Given Wagner’s history with such breakaways I didn’t have high hopes. He’s got the speed but as of yet been unable to prove he can pull off anything when he gets to the net one-on-one. And yet he managed to sneak one past Francouz glove side, top shelf to put the Kings in an early lead. (With all the veterans recently unloaded from the roster he’d better start proving his worth IMO.) Ironically, or not depending on how you rate Wagner as a player, he followed up by taking a penalty of his own, at which point I face palmed so hard. The penalty kill was fine though, so no harm no foul? Quick was starting to make me nervous though; he was making good saves but the rebounds looked super shaky and with players like MacKinnon and Landeskog I didn’t have faith that’d end well. The next penalty kill for the Kings almost didn’t – far too much action down by Quick and the inability to clear almost cost them big. By the end of the first the Avs had outshot the Kings 14-7, but where it counted the Kings were up 1-0.

The second period was your typical black hole from the Kings. It took them until the last 27 seconds to crack double digits in shots, meaning their total for the period was 3. You’re not gonna get far with only 3 shots. And not while Colorado was getting power play after power play. To their credit, the Kings did have the Colorado power play figured out. They have two zone entries, drop back to MacKinnon or drop back to Makar; those were covered well. And their two scoring plays, Mac doing his best Ovechkin impression (congrats on the 700 goals btw Ovi) or Makar walking the line and shooting through traffic. Again, covered those well. And despite Makinnon and Makar’s presence they Avs other top five players were out. Had they been healthier, the second would have been a blood bath. Quick was oscillating between Jedi and “wait what is happening?” Actually he was consistently good, but the Avs game tying goal was only a matter of time. It came from Graves, a slick wrister beating him also top shelf, glove side. To be fair to Quick Graves is a +43, leading the league in that statistic, his closest competition at +33 and +30. With penalties to both Brown and Makar with 33 seconds remaining, it would all come down to the third.

Five minutes in there was some confusion as to who had the last change, and Coach McLellan had some rather angry words to the refs about it, leading to a minor penalty for unsportsmanlike conduct. “I earned it” he said. “I’m not happy that I put our team in that situation, but I’m pretty damn frustrated with the way things were being handled at that point, so I’ll leave it at that. I only want to get penalized once tonight, not twice.” As with most things in this game, the end result was naught. As was most of the action this period, leading to the inevitable overtime. It was much more exciting than the third, the lack of extra players making all that extra ice feel full of potential and opportunities, both ways. With 1:15 remaining the Avs took a penalty, giving Doughty, Brown, Kopitar and Frk out for some power play action. Exciting, but ultimately it would be a shootout that would decide the game, and for some unfathomable reason the Kings picked Kopitar even though he is terrible at them. None of the Kings – Kopitar, Frk and Vilardi – could get past Franzcous. MacKinnon and Landeskog couldn’t get past Quick either, but Donskoi made the game winning decision.