Devon Toews says the Avalanche need to play a full 60 minutes, noting that these tight games could easily swing in their favor.
DENVER — Devon Toews expressed satisfaction with the Colorado Avalanche’s standing after 10 games but emphasized the team still needs to improve its ability to put games away.
The Avalanche sit at 5-1-4 on the season, a somewhat unusual record. Colorado has dropped its last four games, though only one was in regulation. After Tuesday’s morning session, Toews said the team has been leaving points on the table rather than simply being lucky to earn a point.
“I don’t think we’ve really played a game where we feel like we’ve had a stinker necessarily, but a lot that we haven’t played a full 60 and allowed teams to stay in games when we were pushing the pace and controlling the play,” Toews said.
The Avalanche fell 4-3 in overtime to the New Jersey Devils, a team off to a blistering 8-1 start. Colorado stumbled out of the gate, conceding a two-goal deficit, yet showed resilience by clawing back to even the score. The second period seemed poised to mark a turning point: the Avalanche controlled play, outshooting New Jersey 11-3, only for momentum to slip away. A sloppy line change allowed Connor Brown to break free on a breakaway, restoring the Devils’ lead and forcing Colorado to chase the game once again. Despite a late strike that sent the contest to overtime, the Devils ultimately prevailed when Jack Hughes capped a two-goal night with a scintillating wrister from the left circle, sizzling over the glove of Trent Miner.
Although Colorado is now 0-4 in overtime this year, Toews believes the team has been more than deserving of earning that extra point, and as he previously stated, it’s just about putting the entire game together.
“We feel like we’re leaving points on the table more so than snagging points when we shouldn’t,” Toews continued. “It’s about leaving some on that we feel like we earned and should have gotten away with. It’s 10 games.”
Adjustments
Toews, as captain Gabriel Landeskog alluded to in a recent interview with The Hockey News, stated that puck management has to be cleaner in order to not fall to 0-2 against the Devils on the year.
“Our puck play has got to be a little bit better, a little cleaner, making it more difficult for teams to attack us and gain time and space. I think we’re giving teams some easy looks and some easy reads right now, when we’re usually a little bit more difficult to get through, so it’s just a point of being focused from the drop of the puck and trying not to get behind.”
Toews also responded to a question from The Hockey News: given that many of the Devils’ top-line scorers, including Jack Hughes and Jesper Bratt, incorporate East-West elements into their game at key moments to exploit lateral gaps, does that change the way he reads plays, or does it lead him to study more video to find different ways to approach defending them?
The 31-year-old elaborated on why he maintains a consistent approach.
“No. I think it’s always a group of five. It’s never just the D trying to defend against a team that likes to go East to West; it’s more a group of five on the ice being locked into our structure. If they want to go East to West, so be it. As long as they don’t attack the dangerous parts of the ice, we’re fine with it.”
The Game
Stay tuned. The Avalanche (5-1-4) take on the New Jersey Devils at Ball Arena. Coverage begins at 7 p.m. local time.
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