Islanders Trounce Avalanche 6-2 at Ball Arena: 'There are no excuses'

DENVER — It felt after the first two losses that the Avalanche were headed in the right direction. All they needed was to fix a few minor gaffes, let the goalie get comfortable, and the wins would start to pile on. Head coach Jared Bednar even expressed that thought in his postgame press conference on Monday.

But that was far from what ended up happening. The Avalanche got trounced 6-2 by the New York Islanders at Ball Arena, falling to 0-3-0 for the first time in 16 years.

“There are no excuses. I didn’t like our game tonight,” Bednar said. “Top to bottom. It’s terrible.”

The Avs came out strong and had a great first five minutes. They even got the game’s first goal from 19-year-old Calum Ritchie, who tallied his first career NHL goal. But instead of building off that play, the ice started to slowly tilt towards the Islanders.

By the time the first period was halfway through, the score was 1-1 and the shots were 11-10. In the following 25 minutes, New York completely dominated play, outshooting the Av 16-5 and scoring three goals — one of which came shorthanded. On one hand, it was pure dominance from Patrick Roy’s club. On the other hand, Colorado made an unthinkable amount of mistakes which led to several goals against.

What made it worse for the Avs was where those blunders were coming from. Star defenseman Cale Makar had perhaps the worst game he’s played in a long time. In each of the last three Islanders goals before the empty netter, Makar’s mistakes led directly to the puck being in the back of his net.

Those tallies first shifted the game from 2-1 to 4-1. And after Casey Mittelstadt tallied his third goal in as many games early in the third to give the Avs life, Makar’s mishap while covering Anthony Duclair in the defensive zone put the game out of reach. It was 5-2, and Colorado couldn’t get anything back from then on.

“Some really stupid childish mistakes and those things you gotta learn from,” Makar said about the three goals he openly took responsibility for. “I gotta be better for the guys. A lot of that one’s on me.”

READ MORE: Makar’s Glaring Mistakes Lead To Three Islanders Goals

Colorado announced before puck drop that Makar’s defense partner Devon Toews had suffered a lower-body injury and would miss the game. Without him, Oliver Kylington stepped in for the first time and took Toews’ spot on the top pair. But Makar wasn’t willing to blame the performance on Toews’ absence.

“I should be able to play with all these guys,” he said. “We’re a very capable back end, we should be able to mix and match pairings.”

Colorado’s last 0-3 start was the 2008-09 season. They went on to finish at the bottom of the Western Conference that year. Before that, Colorado started 0-4 in 1998-99 before winning the division and advancing to Game 7 of the Western Conference Final.

This is by no means the first stretch of bad games in the Bednar era. But the pressure gets elevated when it comes at the beginning of the season — when you realize you’ve let in 20 goals through three games and sit at the bottom of the standings.

Alexandar Georgiev made 32 saves but still let in five goals. It was far and away his best game of the season. But the question now is, what do you do in goal against the Boston Bruins on Wednesday? Is this the time to give Justus Annunen his first start? Or do you ride Georgiev again to build off of a better showing? Either way, the Avs will look for their first win and hope to escape starting in a 0-4-0 hole.

And they’ll have to do it again without Gabriel Landeskog, Valeri Nichushkin, Artturi Lehkonen, or Jonathan Drouin. Bednar hopes to have Toews back but that isn’t yet guaranteed.

“He’s gonna have a little bit of a longer timeline,” Bednar said of Drouin, who hasn’t played since opening night. “Don’t know [how long} exactly either because he’s getting reevaluated.”