Avs leaders: What team needs to change moving forward

Playing hockey to win games is Nathan MacKinnon's job — he said he and his team are not doing their job after a 7-0 shutout loss to the Vegas Golden Knights on Saturday. 

"Last three out of four games have been really poor from us," the 28-year-old forward told Guerilla Sports reporter Jesse Montano after the loss. "Tough effort starts with our players to be better. We're not getting the job done obviously and we need to play a lot better."

Devon Toews said the team should have its game nailed down by now but it doesn't and it's the team's job to figure out how to get it done. The loss to Vegas can be used as a pivotal point for the team to push harder in finding its identity.

"Every loss we're trying to turn into a win right now. That one looks bad on the scoresheet. It's kind of a culmination of the last four or five games for us," Toews said. 

Chemistry is off and Mikko Rantanen said as a leader he needs to create more communication within the team. 

"More chatter on the bench — try to help it that way. We get a little quiet at some points when we go down two or whatever," Rantanen said. "Kind of get frustrated when there's no point, there's still a lot of game left. But it's on us, leaders on the team — got to keep the chatter going in the room and on the bench."

Rantanen and Andrew Cogliano have admittedly been the more vocal leaders on the team, while MacKinnon and Cale Makar are more of the quiet style. 

"I'm a guy who tries to lead by example. I'm not a very outspoken person in a lot of aspects of it," Makar said. "If I need to speak up, I will. For myself, when I speak I'd like my words to mean something — not trying to spew random stuff out. We have a lot of leaders in the room and everybody's different."

It's only 10 games into the season but the Avalanche need to work on getting that chemistry together in order to win games and find some consistency in doing so.