It wasn’t that Rodrigues was overwhelmingly good tonight, but after what felt like one of his more disastrous games of the season in Toronto, this was a very good way for him to respond to the growing adversity. I will be very interested to see how Bednar utilizes Eller when the Penguins come to Denver next week. Eller has taken the spot between Andrew Cogliano and Logan O’Connor and tied these three together to become an extremely important part of Colorado’s potential playoff success. The goal was great, but a second consecutive night of Eller taking on the top two lines of the opposing team and coming out on the winning side continues to showcase the value the Avs saw in Eller when they acquired him at the deadline. While his head-to-head wasn’t quite as sparkling as last night when he ate up John Tavares and Auston Matthews, separately at first and then later together, he did handle the Pinto assignment to middling results but produced great numbers against the Stutzle line, which is Ottawa’s best. Why Eller is here, however, is he once again shouldered hard matchups chosen by the opposing team’s head coach and delivered quality results. Very frustrating for Ottawa, huge for Colorado and good for Eller. It wasn’t, the Avs got the break and it turned into the game-winning goal. It should have been icing, then it should have been blown dead. If that happened to the Avs, I’d be saying it was complete garbage from the officials. This isn’t about the goal, which we should all be able to agree was nothing short of utter nonsense. It wasn’t perfect, but all three of Colorado’s well-compensated stars led the way to tonight’s win. His shot share wasn’t as good as it normally is but as the team lost its legs late, he was out there doing his thing to kill time and get to the end. Makar, like his friends above, was just a cut above the rest today. I’m not going to ding him for the penalty late because I thought it was a trash call. This was the all-around performance you love. He was moving really well and impacting the game in a lot of areas. Like MacKinnon, just a great day for the big guy. Rantanen finished with a goal and two assists. MacKinnon had three assists and he does great work along the wall on Colorado’s second goal but didn’t pick up a point on it. I guess I didn’t really feel like putting Nathan MacKinnon, Mikko Rantanen, and Cale Makar all in here separately so, I didn’t.

Avs cover editor