The Colorado Avalanche scored five power-play goals to absolutely breeze past a pretty strong St. Louis Blues team on Friday night. It was a bounce-back performance from a less-than stellar opener and the Avalanche showed they are more the team everyone thought they were going into the 2020-21 season. The team looked strong at both ends of the ice, but the man advantage was the difference maker and the team’s best players played that way.
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The Avs five power play goals matched a franchise record for most in a single game. It sent a statement.
Cale Makar assisted on three of the Avalanche’s eight goals. 11 different players scored at least one point, seven points came from the top line, it was the first two-goal game for Landeskog in more than two years, and goaltender Philip Grubauer earns a shutout and an assist.
If there were any questions about this Avs team going into the season, it was in net. That said, Grubauer looked more than capable and his shutout will silence any critics, at least for now.
Gabriel Landeskog said he liked a lot about Friday’s game, especially after looking at how bad they were on Wednesday. “Obviously the power play was a big factor today, but I thought even before we started scoring the goals we were playing well and playing hard.”
This is more the team that fans were expecting and there was a lot of talk that the rest of the league might be in trouble if this is how Colorado plays going forward.
We’ll see if the team can continue the strong play as they’ll have a bit of break, take the weekend off and then travel to Los Angeles for four games against the Kings and Ducks starting Tuesday night.
The Avs Ruined Hoffman’s Debut
Going into the game, one of the big storylines was that Mike Hoffman would be making his Blues debut. He had no points and two shots on goal. He played only 12:53 of ice time. Part of that had to do with how much time the Blues spend on the penalty kill.
St. Louis Blues defenseman Robert Bortuzzo sustained an upper-body in Friday’s game after taking high hit from Avalanche forward Valeri Nichushkin along the boards. It took place early in the first period and Bortuzzo did not return.
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