The reality is when you're in a bad stretch of hockey, you look to your best players to get you out of it.

And the abs are very lucky to have their best players consistently get them out of it.

Abs win 5 to 2 over the Washington Capitals.

After a handful of games that did not really feel like Avalanche Hockey, or at least this year's version of Avalanche Hockey,

this one got back to where you feel comfortable with what the abs were doing.

And I say that even over their couple of wins over this bad stretch, because those wins, frankly, were blowouts.

It's hard to feel anything other than one team just getting dominated in those types of games.

This was a legitimate good game against a pretty good Washington team, and the abs played their game the way they wanted to and took care of business.

Maybe one of the most crucial factors in that is scoring first, and the abs are able to do that.

Parker Kelly gaining the zone here, the abs bottom six is a bit jumbled up at times during this game, so the lines are a little bit in flux.

But just by gaining the zone,

he forces enough space to get Kail Makar the puck, and then Kail Makar just goes to work. This is a guy who can put defenses into a bad spot, simply with his skating ability. Look at how much space he's created in the middle of the ice by skating off of the center and then cooking a guy. The abs put two guys in the middle off of that, and Cale McCarr has a clean shooting lane to set up for a tip play, and that's exactly what occurs, and it's a great tip from Kelly. I don't want to take away from the Aves' depth forwards. It's a great goal from Parker Kelly. forwards would score an even more important goal later in this game. But like I said off the top,

you're looking at your stars. And that was a goal set up by Kail McCar. And all night long, Kail McCar looked great. He didn't get rewarded on the box score, maybe the way he deserved, but played fantastic hockey all night. Looked like the kale we all know and love, the version of kale that the abs need. He's got to be special for them, and when he plays like this, it feels really good. Despite scoring first, the first period was probably the worst period of the game for the abs. Not that they were bad, but it was just the worst of the three. And part of that comes with the fact that the abs took three penalties in the period. Now, you could argue the abs do need to clean up some discipline and I think that's a fair shout to some extent.

But when you look at the way the penalties were called, if you actually watched this game,

this was horrific refereeing, top to bottom, into this game for both teams. So I'm not going to

punish the abs too much for a lack of discipline

here and kind of just throw out all the penalties in this game. Certainly the one that leads

to Washington's goal is straight up made up. As Wedgwood drops his stick, it goes behind his

net and a stick that no avalanche players touching gets stepped on and they call it a trip.

So that's something. Here's the power play

goal. Not a ton to this play from Washington. It's a nice zone entry from them, which gets them

the immediate setup. Maybe the avs sag off a hair deeper than you would like here, but this is not

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