It was the kind of night the Colorado Avalanche can’t afford to keep repeating, and in Nashville it got ugly fast.
Colorado was thumped 6-2 by the Predators on Sunday at Bridgestone Arena, undone by a mess of a performance that stretched across the power play, the penalty kill and five-on-five play. The Avs scored only after falling behind by five, with Artturi Lehkonen and Devon Toews providing the lone goals. Scott Wedgewood stopped 29 of 35 shots, while Justus Annunen saw just 21 shots at the other end and was never asked to face a heavy workload.
Special teams tilted the game early and never really gave Colorado a way back in. The Avalanche went 0-for-3 on the power play and failed to cash in on six minutes with the man advantage. On the penalty kill, they gave up a goal on Nashville’s first three chances and four total, handing the Predators complete control of the matchup in that phase.
Ryan O’Reilly was central to the damage, finishing with two power-play goals and two assists while winning 11 of 12 faceoffs. Jack Drury added a highlight-reel goal in his first game against Colorado in years, and Steven Stamkos, Roman Josi and Filip Forsberg all finished with three points for Nashville.
Forsberg opened the scoring just 4:01 in, taking advantage of an early power play and immediately putting Colorado on the back foot. That pattern has started to feel familiar for the Avalanche, who again had trouble responding after the first goal. Nashville kept coming, and Stamkos later scored on a puck that barely crossed the line as Cale Makar tried to knock it away.
The Predators led by two after the first period and never eased up. Before Lehkonen could get his 10th goal of the season, Nashville had already added goals from O’Reilly, Drury and another on the power play. After Toews scored, the Predators answered again with their fourth power-play goal of the night.
At the end of it, the numbers told the same story as the eye test: Nashville outshot Colorado in every period and dominated the game from start to finish.
The Avalanche’s problems went well beyond one bad bounce or one bad stretch. They’ve now turned in three road games in a row of this type, the sort of outing that used to be easy to dismiss as a one-off. This is starting to look like something deeper, especially since some of those habits are showing up even in wins.
And on Sunday, there was no hiding from any of it. The Avalanche looked slow, frustrated and outworked.
They were beaten to loose pucks, lost battles all over the ice and spent long stretches pinned in their own end. It was their worst road performance of the stretch, but it wasn’t an isolated issue.
There was at least a little satisfaction on the Nashville side for the former Avalanche. Drury’s goal came with a primary assist from Ross Colton, and both players had plenty of reason to want a strong showing against Colorado. O’Reilly, meanwhile, put together one of his best regular-season games against the Avs since leaving the team 10 years ago.
Annunen didn’t face a barrage, but he did what he needed to do in a game his team controlled from the start. The Predators had the night they wanted. The Avalanche did not.
In Other News...
Avalanche Just Showed The Problem Fans Keep Fearing
A bad night at home can look different from one team to the next, but for the Avalanche it came with the kind of problems that tend to linger in a long season. Colorado jumped in front early against Nashville and still walked away with a 6-2 loss, getting outshot 35-21 and watching the game slip away as the Predators kept finding answers. The power play had chances to swing momentum back, yet the Avalanche went scoreless on four opportunities and never fully recovered from the early collapse.
The more troubling part was how often the cracks showed when Colorado was trying to kill penalties, because Nashville cashed in four times on seven man-advantage chances. That kind of special teams gap is the sort of issue fans notice fast, especially when it comes on a night when the building should have been an advantage. Even a late benching of Fedor Svechkov in the third period did little to change the tone, and now the Avalanche move on to a home date with the New Jersey Devils looking for a much cleaner response. [Read more 🡒]
Avalanche Pipeline Took Another Tough Turn After Costly Eagles Mistakes
The Colorado Eagles had a promising start before things quickly unraveled in a 4-1 loss to the Bakersfield Condors, a result that left another mark on the Avalanche pipeline. Nikita Prishchepov supplied the lone goal for Colorado, but the rest of the night belonged to Bakersfield after the teams were tied 1-1.
Aku Raty powered the Condors with two goals, and Nathan Day picked up his first win of the season with 28 saves. Colorado goaltender Trent Miner faced 30 shots and allowed four goals, as the Eagles could not recover once Bakersfield strung together three unanswered tallies. [Read more 🡒]
Avalanche Were In Trouble Early For One Frustrating Reason
The Avalanche spent much of the night chasing the game after Nashville raced out to a 3-0 lead through the first two periods. Filip Forsberg, Steven Stamkos and Ryan O'Reilly all found the net for the Predators, while Colorado kept running into the kind of self-inflicted trouble that can bury a team fast in a tight divisional game.
Turnovers were a problem, and the power play never gave Colorado the lift it needed to get back on track. The second period brought a flurry of penalties and even a fight, but the Predators kept control anyway, leaving the Avalanche to sort through an evening that never found much rhythm. [Read more 🡒]