Avalanche Game 64 Recap: All Hail Cale

I am so blessed that Cale Makar is on my team!

To say that this was a day to remember for the Colorado Avalanche would be an understatement. We made a lot of noise today, not just on the ice, but off it as well. The Avs are making moves! First off, we traded Ryan Johansen to the Philadelphia Flyers for defenseman Sean Walker; the Flyers later waived Johansen. We all knew Johansen would be dealt; he had been underwhelming, for the most part, for the Avs this season. As for Walker, he's supposed to be quite the key player, so this is a big move for the Avs.

It wasn't our only one. The Avs also traded Bowen Byram to the Buffalo Sabres for Casey Mittelstadt! WOW! A lot of Avs fans stated that we needed to move Byram. I was one of the few who didn't want that. But the return we got...oh man! Byram was literally a gift. We ended up with him because the Ottawa Senators absolutely sucked in the 2018-19 season, which resulted in the Avs (who had Ottawa's first round pick in the 2019 Draft in the Matt Duchene deal) being in the lottery. We got the #4 pick, and used it to draft Byram, who became a key player in the Avalanche's 2022 Stanley Cup Championship. Byram had nine points during that playoff run--all assists. I and every Avalanche fan appreciate those assists, and I am happy that he joins championship teammate Erik Johnson in Buffalo.

As for Casey Mittelstadt, I'm very excited to see Mighty Casey in action for the Avs. We would have to wait a little while longer for both him and Walker to make their Avalanche debuts, for after all, we had a game to play later in the day.

Regarding the business at hand, the Avs got some help a day prior from the Seattle Kraken, as they defeated the Winnipeg Jets in regulation. It looked like the San Jose Sharks would help us, but they blew a 6-3 lead in less than three minutes, and lost in overtime. The Avs looked to continue keeping pace in the Central Division as we hosted the Detroit Red Wings, and hope that Dallas and Winnipeg would slip on a few banana peels. In net, it was Alexandar Georgiev vs Alex Lyon, but the Avs would be on the penalty kill very quickly. At 1:48, Robby Fabbri capitalized on the Wings' first shot of the game, but the period would see a wave of Avalanche shots. One of them came from Cale Makar, and it would tie the game at 1.

I have to mention this:

I brought up a pair of 2022 Cup Champion players, but there's one more I have to bring up: Joseph Taylor Compher. This game marked Compher's first game at Ball Arena as a visitor, and of course, he received a video tribute and a standing ovation. The Avs lost a lot of players from that 2022 run via either trade or free agency, and in Compher's case, he signed with the Wings during this past offseason. Out of the players who are not part of the team anymore, Compher's one of the ones whose departure from the team broke my heart, up there with Nazem Kadri and Darcy Kuemper. Compher had a bit of Alex Tanguay in him, mixed with Chris Drury and Ville Nieminen. Any and all goals he scored were often at the right time. He scored two such goals in that Game Six against the St. Louis Blues, leading to Darren Helm's series clincher.

Thank you, J.T. Compher. Thanks a bunch.

The first period continued on and saw the Wings start to rack up shots after falling behind 13-2 in that category. Thanks to Georgiev's inability to get a rebound, David Perron (ugh) gave the Wings a 2-1 lead. A delay of game penalty was called on the Wings, as Moritz Seider shot the puck in to the glass, and it only took five seconds for the Avs power play to strike. Nathan MacKinnon, whose assist gave him his 106th point, and the league lead in that category, joined the 40-goal club and tied it up at 2. Wings had a power play with about a minute and a half left, it stretched into the second period, and was killed off. That's when the Avs completely took this game over.

Artturi Lehkonen gave the Avs the lead at 8:49, and at 16:12, Cale Makar made it 4-2 with his second goal of the game. Both goals were assited by MacKinnon and Mikko Rantanen, the latter also assisting on MacKinnon's PPG. With two for Makar, we Avs fans were waiting for the Hat Trick. That opportunity came on the power play later in the period, and Makar's shot managed to squirt through Lyon and in. For the first time in Makar's young and budding career, Cale Makar picked up a Hat Trick! It was 5-2 after two periods, and in the third period, Alex Lyon was out, and James Reimer was in. Yeah, you read that right. James Reimer, the homophobic doofus who still has Patrice Bergeron living rent free in his head after 11 years, took over the net in the third period. We did score twice on him; Jonathan Drouin from Ross Colton and Josh Manson, and Jean-Luc Foudy picked up his first career goal, with the lone assist coming from Joel Kiviranta.

As of now, the Avalanche have 13 players remaining from that 2022 championship squad. Three of them took over this game with four points each. The talk of the game, of course, was Cale Douglas Makar, who picked up his first career Hat Trick. He joined some rare company with his his performance; joining Brian Fogarty, Uwe Krupp, and Sandis Ozolinsh as the only defensemen in the combined history of the Nordiques/Avalanche franchise to have Hat Tricks, with Makar and Ozolinsh being the only ones to do so in an Avalanche uniform (Fogarty and Krupp donned the Nordiques logo when they picked up their Hat Tricks).

As for MacKinnon, he took the points lead in absolutely grand fashion with his second straight four-point game. With 109 points, MacKinnon leads Nikita Kucherov by four points in the Ross (and Hart) race, and he's actually on pace to finish wth 140 points, which would surpass Peter Stastny's total of 139 (1981-82 season) as the most in franchise history. The Avs are now within two points of the Central lead, and the three-game homestand concludes on Friday against the Minnesota Wild.

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