Man, hockey's pretty easy when you score a bunch of goals before the third period.

Who would have guessed?

Avs win over the Pittsburgh Penguins, 6 to 2.

Look, in the first period, which it turns out was the only period that really mattered

of this hockey game, I'm not going to say the abs did much well.

In fact, I think they only did exactly one thing well in that period, and that was finish.

And even that, they didn't do for the first portion of the period all that well.

This was very far from the Ab's best game, but they did the most important thing in the first period,

and then realistically spent the rest of the game turtling, but I'll talk about that a little bit later.

What I want to start with is the superstar play of the game, because that's what the first goal was. On the ice, you have Marty Natchez, Nathan McKinnon, Gabe Landisog, Brent Burns, and Josh Manson. Which Avs player do you think makes the defensive play on this shift? If you said Nathan McKinnon, I'm guessing you probably already saw this play before, but the blue line poke check and then McKinnon goes around his man, turn the jets on, and just wins the race, even uses his body to get positioned down the middle of the ice. That's just awesome hockey. Only way you can see that, and then he also puts a great finish glove side. All right, I don't think you're going to see Nathan McKinnon make a defensive play at the blue line very often, but the rest of that was Nate just wanting it more, going and getting it, and frankly taking it. That's the type of hungry play that you're going to see from Nathan McKinnon that maybe you don't see every night in the regular season, but you saw it right there. Did I mention when he plays like that?

It's super duper fun. It is, however, an avalanche first period, so no good deed goes unpunished,

and it's a tie game within five minutes. Brent Burns, going into the corner to collect a puck,

and he tries this weird fake where he quickly moves the puck up the far wall and then tries to throw it back to Josh Manson.

Problem being, the guy defending him just goes behind the net, and it ends up being a pass right to him.

So don't do that.

Turnovers are bad.

Josh Manson initially makes a good play on the defender, but falls over,

so Pittsburgh is able to maintain possession.

They get a puck out high, and ultimately a slap shot from out high.

I don't know if Burns gets a piece of this.

He probably does.

The puck knuckles super weird, and Wedgwood just can't seem to find it.

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