Avalanche concerned with rare lull as slumping Capitals visit
Every team experiences lulls throughout an 82-game season, but the Colorado Avalanche seemed immune to that in the first half of the schedule.
Finally, a lull has hit Colorado, which dropped four of its last six games and suffered its first loss in regulation on home ice. The Avalanche will try to break out of that mini-slump when they host the Washington Capitals on Monday afternoon in Denver.
Colorado's recent woes are minor when taken into context. The Avalanche's 74 points are by far the most in the NHL, and they amassed that total while playing the fewest games (46) in the league.
Despite those lofty numbers, head coach Jared Bednar has not liked how his team has played of late.
"One, there's trends that are coming our way," Bednar said. "You're missing key guys, so everyone's job becomes more important. Looking at that, what are some guys doing in our lineup, from what expectations are in the way we know they can play? ... What they're doing now, it's not enough.
"Two, we're not defending hard enough as a unit."
Colorado is missing top-pair defenseman Devon Toews and captain Gabriel Landeskog, who are dealing with upper-body injuries. Toews and Joel Kiviranta (lower body) skated ahead of the team's practice on Sunday and look close to returning.
The Avalanche still boast the best offense (4.00 goals per game) and defense (2.30) in the league as well as one of the top individual scorers in Nathan MacKinnon, who is second with 82 points (36 goals, 46 assists).
Washington features all-time goals leader Alex Ovechkin (917) but has been scuffling the past six weeks. The Capitals followed a 10-1-1 stretch earlier in the season by going 6-10-3 and begin a six-game road trip after two straight home losses.
The slump knocked them out of a playoff spot, but there is a lot of time left for them to recover and get back into the postseason picture.
"I think we've just got to find ways here to be better and be better for one another," defenseman Jakob Chychrun said after a 5-2 loss to Florida on Saturday. "Just to start to play with a little more desperation, urgency. I think we always try to play so hard as a group, but it just seems right now, everything is just a little bit off."
Ovechkin is second on the team with 41 points (20 goals, 21 assists) but did not find the back of the net over the last three games. Tom Wilson leads the team with 42 points (22 goals, 20 assists) and defenseman John Carlson is third with 38 points (nine goals, 29 assists).
The biggest issue is consistency.
"I think we have good moments through the game where we're doing things correctly, we're on our toes, we're doing a lot of the things that we talk about what our identity looks like," Washington coach Spencer Carbery said. "And I would say then there's times when we get away from it, whether it's missed coverage, puck play, lack of execution."