Avalanche sink to new depths, get bamboozled by Canadiens 10-1

If you read Mile High Hockey, you know our game recaps are pretty loose in format, but they typically highlight goals, key moments, penalties, etc. You know, pretty much what you would expect. Right now I’m at a loss. I have no godly idea how to recap a 10-1 hockey game. Yes, 10-1. That was the score of tonight’s hockey game against the Montreal Canadiens.

Seriously, like...I’m just not prepared, so forgive me as I wing this.

After an encouraging win the other night in Boston to snap a six-game winless streak, the Colorado Avalanche decided to take that encouragement, drag it through a field of cow excrement and launch it into the sun. What does that look like exactly? Well, our SBNation overlords summed up the first period as well as any:

For those of you who can’t believe your eyes, I’ll try and explain:

• Brian Flynn goal 2:52 into the period
• Max Pacioretty goal 5:13 in
• Artturi Lehkonen goal 7:12 in

(At this juncture, starting goalie, Calvin Pickard, is pulled in lieu of Semyon Varlamov for the first time.)

• Max Pacioretty scores again just a minute later at 8:13
• Paul Bryon gets in on the action at 8:41
• Brian Flynn mercifully waits five minutes to put up the Habs sixth of the period
• Oh, and Blake Comeau tipped in a Nikita Zadorov shot with 13 seconds left in the period

Yup, that all happened, in one freaking period. Unfortunately for the Avalanche and their poor browbeaten fans, though, the game would continue on—and it would not get any easier to watch.

• Alexander Radulov scored 11:35 into the period
• Max Pacioretty would complete his hat trick with a 1:30 left in the second
• Jeff Petry would score—get this—a buzzer beater right before the period ended

In little league, they end games if one team runs up the score too much. In the NHL? Not so much. The Avalanche switch back to Pickard for the third period after Varlamov had given up six goals on 16 shots, and it wasn’t quite as brutal as his first go-around. Indeed, all that happened in the third was:

• Max Pacioretty scoring his fourth goal of the evening, because of course he did
• Jarome Iginla trying to start after a senseless garbage time hit

And that’s what happened, folks. Can you make sense of it? Because I can’t right now. I’m...tired and need time to gather my thoughts. Tough to make wholesale changes when you have to turn around and play again in Toronto tomorrow, but I sense something drastic on the horizon—for better or worse.