Avalanche HC Jared Bednar gave a simple reason for his shootout lineup in loss to Flames

The Colorado Avalanche had a 2-0 lead in the third period of Monday night’s game against the Calgary Flames at Ball Arena. After squandering two goals in the final ten minutes, the Avs had a chance to win the game in overtime, but the puck stopped dead just a hair before crossing the red line, resulting in a shootout.

Brock Nelson's shot sneaks through Vladar but can't beat the post#GoAvsGo | #Flames pic.twitter.com/c0Oj9kGg72

— Hockey Daily 365 l NHL Highlights & News (@HockeyDaily365) April 1, 2025

The Avalanche haven’t been great in shootouts this season, as the team was just 2-2 heading into Monday’s contest, and only three players had scored a shootout goal. That number stayed the same Monday.

The Avalanche rolled out Ross Colton, Charlie Coyle and Valeri Nichushkin to take the three shootout attempts. No Nathan MacKinnon, no Martin Necas, no Brock Nelson, no Cale Makar. Colton missed wide left, Coyle’s shot was saved, and Nichushkin’s hit the outside of the post as the fans at Ball Arena filed out the exits.

Many fans were confused as to why the top guys weren’t taking the shots in the shootout. Was Bednar seeing what the other guys had? Was it a matchup thing against Calgary’s goaltender?

“I just go on by some of the analytics that we have,” Bednar said after the game Monday. “Colton’s got a good track record, Coyle is like out best … I’ll always like Val in it.”

Coyle has converted on 36.5% of his shootout attempts in his career, while Colton has converted on 50% of attempts. For comparison, MacKinnon has made 31.1% of his, Necas 18.2% and Drouin 25.8%. Nichuskin has shot 50% in his career on just six attempts.

So far this season, all skaters in the NHL have converted on 148 of 427 shootout attempts, good for 34.66%. This shows that Bednar made the right choice solely based off analytics by choosing three guys who have shot over the league average. However, analytics isn’t everything in sports, and sometimes you’ve got to go with your best players, even if they haven’t been performing that well.

The other aspect of Monday’s decision is that the Avs had already secured one of two possible points, and the team is practically locked into the No. 3 seed (96.6% chance) in the Central Division in the Western Conference. Even though there are no shootouts in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, this was most likely the best chance Bednar and the Avs will ever get to experiment with a shootout in a real-game scenario.