Avalanche seeking road forward on four-game trip

TORONTO -- The Colorado Avalanche will know by the end of this stretch of four straight road games if they are rounding into the team they believe they can and should be this season.

"Yeah, I mean, you have to be a dominant team at home and then you have to be a very good road team," Avalanche forward Gabriel Landeskog said. "If you want to be that dominant team that you want to be and go where you want to go that is most definitely the objective."

The Avalanche got off to a strong start to their four-game road stretch with a 6-3 win against the Toronto Maple Leafs at Scotiabank Arena on Tuesday.

But what happens next in Ottawa on Thursday, then in Montreal on Saturday and finally in Utah a week from Wednesday will either allow them to feel settled into the season or continue what has been a topsy-turvy first quarter for the Stanley Cup contender.

You never want to place too much emphasis on a stretch of four games in an 84-game season, and the Avalanche (11-6-2) aren't doing that, but they feel the importance of these four games, especially considering what road life has been like for them so far this season.

The win in Toronto was their fourth road win in nine games (4-5-0), including being on the wrong side of some lopsided results, like 6-2 in Nashville on Oct. 25 and 7-2 in Columbus on Nov. 3, and simply not playing at or near their expected level in Philadelphia and New Jersey.

"This year, so far we've laid more eggs defensively and been blown out in more games than I think we were all of last year," Landeskog said. "Some of those are really good wakeup calls for us, and some are just things we need to do better in effort, mindset, things like that. That's just the way it goes. I think it's good for us as a group to face some adversity early on and have to deal with it. It is what you make it, and if you make sure it's a good lesson for you as a group then it'll be good for us."

Landeskog mentioned last season for a reason.

It seems through the first quarter of this season that the Avalanche have been measured against what they did last season.

"That's a part of it, right," Landeskog said.

It is, and it's also reasonable considering this is a team that is supposed to contend for the Stanley Cup, a favorite among many pundits to win it. But it's also unfair to ask and even expect the same kind of results as last season.

Last season, the Avalanche ran away with the Presidents' Trophy, winning 55 games and setting a franchise record with 121 points. They finished first in goals, goals against and on the penalty kill last season.

"It took until, whatever, January to lose our sixth game in regulation," Landeskog said.

It was Jan. 23.

This year, their sixth regulation loss came in Columbus on Nov. 3.

"So, I mean, there was a lot of winning, especially in the first half of last year, but you can't lose sight of how you got there, how you were winning on a nightly basis, the hard work that goes into it," Landeskog said. "It's easy to remember the wins and how easy things were, but you often forget the small details that go into that, the work that goes into that. It doesn't just happen."

The Avalanche might have forgotten about all that a few times already this season, with coach Jared Bednar questioning the team's effort on multiple occasions, usually after a bad road loss.

"There's been a lot of games where we kind of hand the opponent some scoring chances and then sometimes they end up in the back of our net, sometimes they don't," Landeskog said. "We always talk about making the opponents earn everything they get. You're in the best league in the world and the opponents are going to create scoring chances, you've just got to make sure they're going to earn it, don't give them any freebies. We've done too much of that this year."

Landeskog said Bednar and the coaching staff have done a good job of putting the focus on some of those smaller details of the game that worked like a charm last season but maybe haven’t been as impactful yet this season.

It looks like it's working now after some tough results early.

The Avalanche have won five of their past seven games, with the 7-2 loss in Columbus their lone loss in regulation during that stretch.

The way they played and responded Tuesday, the resiliency they showed, are important signs of what could come in a very important stretch of four straight road games.

"Nothing is permanent in this league," Bednar said. "So, you're not very good on the road for a handful of games. In fact, you're awful. And then you play a good game like tonight. If we just keep playing the right way and picking up and improving some of the things we've been talking about -- it's a long year so we're not hitting the panic button just because we hadn't won a couple games on the road and we're not celebrating too hard just because we've been good at home. It's a work in progress. You've got to keep approaching it day by day. But, I mean, we'd certainly like to play a lot better on the road than we had early in the year and this is a good start for us."