Here's how I felt about last night's overtime win.
It was a victory, but it felt like a dental appointment. Mother fucking hell that was painful to watch. Avs completely dominate the hapless Coyotes at even strength, but a pathetic power play outage (0-5, pretty sure they generated an average of one shot per penalty) and piss-poor shot selection ends up making Antti Raanta look like Mike Richter powered by the Infinity Stones. Way too many easy shots, weak-ass backhands, and slow releases. Also, the Avs failed miserably to generate real traffic in front of the net.
Anyway, I shouldn't complain too much since they won and they did it in OT, which is certainly never a given with this team. It's amazing how much talent this team has, but also how, well, dumb this team is. It's just not a collection of guys who possess high hockey IQs. I think that's a big reason why they suck so bad in 3-on-3, too often they're pushing too hard and end up making a really bad turnover or get caught up ice at the worst possible time. Anyway, they didn't do that, and it was one of their smartest players, Gabriel Landeskog, who won it.
Just please, Hockey Gods, just give us back Bowen Byram and Cale Makar. If I ever have to see another Greg Pateryn shift it'll be way too soon.
Nathan MacKinnon came back from his concussion and was fantastic throughout, even though he had no points.
I am nowhere near the "Fire Bednar" bandwagon, but I've been rather lukewarm about his assistants, especially Ray Bennett. Bennett was brought in to fix a flagging power play, and he's failed miserably IMO. They should've moved on last season after the power play was rendered helpless in the series against Dallas. Unfortunately it feels like a lesson they're going to learn way too late.