Lord, would you look at you
Now that you’re here, ain’t you
Proud of your peers
And the long way you’ve come?
Kris Kristofferson - Breakdown (A Long Way from Home)
Someone might want to give AAA a call. The wheels have fallen off the bus and I think we're going to need a tow. The Avalanche lost 3-1 tonight and, really, if not for Craig Anderson it wouldn't have been that close.
The Avs were outshot 46-25 and looked...guh. Most of the Avs not named Matt Duchene or Wojtek Wolski were more or less invisible. Duchene scored the Avs' lone goal to oh-so-briefly cut the lead to 2-1 and Wolski seemed to be involved a lot offensively and defensively. Other than that, it was another goaltending clinic by Craig Anderson, but even his now-routine Hurculean effort wasn't enough to carry the team tonight.
The Avalanche bus had nothing in the tank offensively, and defensively it may have been worse (did I mention 46 shots?). After doing a tremendous job avoiding odd-man rushes this year, our guys kindly opened the floodgates this evening with a bunch of two-on-ones and that oh-so-craptacular 1-on-none by Jamie McGinn to seal the game.
Hey, we all knew the Avs were due for an off game and we certainly got that tonight. In the scheme of things, tonight's game is not very significant - this team still had an unbelievable, record-setting first month. What IS important, though, is how the team responds to this gruesome game. It would be easy to make an Andrew Raycroft joke here (the Avs should face him in their next game on Sunday), but even against Razor the goals aren't going to score themselves. The Avalanche will need to bring a little bit more to the table if they want to keep winning. I'm really intrested to see how they respond on Sunday.