With Landy out, the Avs are missing an entire scoring line's worth of forwards from last year. Very good ones too. That's gonna hurt no matter what.
It's funny but 3-on-3 runs completely counter to Nathan MacKinnon's game. You'd think it wouldn't but it does. His game is predicated on finding/creating space that isn't there, weaving through gaps and bulldozing his way through defenders. You can see he tries that in OT and it usually leads to disaster--there's all this wide open space and he tries jamming himself in between three guys to make a play of some sort. Meanwhile, guys like Nuke (and before him, EJ) say "Holy shit, lookit all this open space" and they use it to their advantage.
Anyway, I was largely impressed with last night's effort after that atrocious 1st period. It's a good sign when the team doesn't lay down after a bad start, I think they'll work out the kinks eventually. And so far, I'm mostly good with Georgiev--he's made a whole lot of big stops when he needs too, and his rebound control isn't great, but it isn't nearly as scary as Kuemper's was.
