Recap: Avalanche hold the Bedards off the scoresheet in 5-0 shutout

8 months ago  /  Mile High Hockey

Photo by Michael Reaves/Getty Images


Justus Annunen stopped all 25 shots he faced. After a big win against the Dallas Stars two night ago, the Colorado Avalanche once again take their show to the road in hopes of carrying that momentum with them away from Ball Arena. The, to put it mildly, struggling Chicago Blackhawks were first up in this two-game trip. The Avalanche put in a concerted effort and performed like the better team to earn a 5-0 shutout win for Justus Annunen.
The Game
Chicago came out of the gate ready to play and at one point shots were 12-5 in their favor. Colorado’s best chance was Mikko Rantanen hitting the post off of a faceoff but the game remained scoreless in part due to Justus Annunen making several good saves for the visitors. Finally, with just over two minutes left in the first period the Avalanche got on the board as Jack Johnson stole the puck from Connor Bedard and fed Zach Parise on the rush. After a lackluster period Colorado was up 1-0.
In the second period the Avalanche turned it up a notch and added three goals to their lead. The first came on their only power play from Ross Colton at 6:56 who waited out Chicago netminder Petr Mrazek and deposited his own rebound into the net. The second goal was started with a great play from Jonathan Drouin and continued on to a Ryan Johansen fake and drive to the net and finished off my a tap in by Parise for his second goal of the night at 7:38.
And then the best goal of the period was scored with three seconds left in the second frame as the top line plus Cale Makar and Bowen Byram skated circles around the offensive zone and then Byram changed for Devon Toews who then fired a laser past Mrazek for the game’s fourth score and vaulted Colorado’s lead to 4-0.
The game was pretty much wrapped up at that point, it was just a question of if Justus Annunen was going to get his first NHL career shutout or not. The Avalanche controlled play in the third period and Chicago was chasing the play the entire time. While the Avalanche weren’t really trying to put another score on the board, Nathan MacKinnon got his favorite low blocker look on a breakaway and scored a sizzling goal for his 100th point of the season at 17:32. After that the game was definitely over as Colorado earned the 5-0 shutout victory.

Takeaways
If the Avalanche could look like this all the time they’d be unstoppable. Despite the quality of opponent it was very cool to see them take care of business and lock the game up without allowing Chicago much of a chance. Hopefully this momentum can be built on for some tougher road contests coming up.
Another reason why it was great to see the Avalanche put the hammer down is so that Justus Annunen could earn the 25-save shutout. In the first period he had to make some stellar saves while the team in front of him got a better handle of the puck. Now with three solid performances in a row it’s going to be very interesting to see if the Avalanche front office believes in him enough to not bring in another goaltender.


First NHL career shutout for Juice ✅First shutout on February 29 in franchise history ✅#GoAvsGo pic.twitter.com/fcVsPRY2oY— Colorado Avalanche (@Avalanche) March 1, 2024




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