Miles Wood’s Reckless Penalties Sends Avalanche Spiraling in 3-0 Defeat

Goals are suddenly hard to come by.

After gaining all the positive vibes from the two straight shutout wins at home, the Avalanche went on the road and laid an egg against the Vancouver Canucks on Tuesday. Colorado was shutout 3-0 despite Quinn Hughes being out with an injury. Suddenly, the Avs have just three goals in their last eight periods of play.

Colorado stormed out of the gate early and seemed like they had their legs. But as the game went on, and as the physicality was ramped up by the Canucks, the Avalanche slowly withered away and couldn’t create the same type of scoring chances in the second half of the game. In the first period, Cale Makar hit the post twice and Martin Necas also struck iron on his best opportunity. The Avs’ top line was skating circles around Vancouver but couldn’t beat goalie Thatcher Demko.

Two power plays weren’t enough to get them on the board in that period either. In fact, the Avs’ only two PP opportunities came in the first. They took all the minor penalties the rest of the way outside of a couple of offsetting calls. But we’ll get into that later.

Vancouver had a power play of its own that carried into the second. Despite not scoring on it, the Canucks kept hold of the momentum and eventually, a nice heads-up play from Jake DeBrusk put them ahead 1-0. DeBrusk caught a puck out of mid-air, put it on the ice, and quickly snapped it past Mackenzie Blackwood at 4:26.

Colorado was able to regain momentum and had easily its best shift of the game while down 1-0. A trio of opportunities from the top line were all stopped, highlighted by an absolute robbery against Artturi Lehkonen by Demko. Last year’s Vezina runner-up has had a tough year since getting back from an injury. But in his two games against the Avalanche, he’s stopped 54-of-55 shots and nearly had two shutouts.

The Canucks eventually added to their lead because of a horrendous set of penalties in the third, which allowed them to go up 2-0 before an empty-netter sealed the win. Along the way, the Avalanche went from trying to claw back into the game to taking unnecessary penalties, trying to ramp up the physicality after the whistle in all the wrong ways, and letting a bigger team get under their skin.

Bad: Miles Wood Can’t Stop Taking Dumb Penalties

An absolutely unnecessary penalty by Miles Wood in the third period. And it cost his team in a big way. Not that one, the first one.

Well, the second set of penalties was also bad. It was all really bad.

Wood had four minor penalties in the third period — split into two sets of two. He also had a 10-minute misconduct with the second set and a fighting major in the second period. Tough night.

At the seven-minute mark of the third period, Wood stepped in and cross-checked 20-year-old defenseman Elias Pettersson and took a penalty on a play where he was trying to get teammate Logan O’Connor’s back. The only problem is, O’Connor didn’t need it. And instead of shifting the momentum towards his team, Wood got called for literally breaking his stick on the young rookie before the official added on matching minors for both.

The younger Pettersson was a problem all night for O’Connor, throwing his body around to catch the veteran at least twice.

On that penalty, the Canucks scored to make it 2-0 and the Avs basically couldn’t get much going the rest of the way.

But that wasn’t all.

At the 12:30 mark, Wood was called for hooking on a play where he was understandably trying to stop a clean break for the Canucks. But after the whistle, while skating to the bench, Wood speared Linus Karlsson as he was skating by and chaos ensued. The result was two more minors and a 10-minute misconduct, effectively ending his night. Tyler Myers and Ross Colton were also given offsetting minors behind the play but Wood’s four minutes ended up being the difference. Down 2-0 with 7:30 remaining, the Avalanche were suddenly tasked with killing off a four-minute penalty.

The part that makes this all the more infuriating for the Avs is that Wood is coming off a game against Philadelphia where he took an unnecessary penalty in the third period of a game they were leading 2-0. I can tell you for certain, the Avalanche’s front office and coaching staff were extremely frustrated with Wood after the Flyers game.

This wasn’t the way to regain some goodwill.

Good: Kudos to Thatcher Demko

Demko entered the game 4-6-3 with a terrible .873 save percentage. It really hasn’t been his year.

But he was excellent, again, against the Avalanche. Given all that’s gone on with Vancouver, between the J.T. Miller trade, the injury to Quinn Hughes, and the undeniably inconsistent on-ice product, Demko should be applauded for doing what he did for the Canucks.

Colorado wasn’t a threat for 60 minutes. That’s part of the reason why the Avs are so frustrating to watch. But in those spurts of the game where they had control, they were really peppering the goalie.

He made 25 saves for his first shutout of the season.