Avs dominant once again, push Predators to the brink

The thing we love about playoff hockey is the drama, and Game 3 between the Colorado Avalanche and the Nashville Predators had no shortage of it. 

Now, we’re going to get into the details of the game, but we have to start with what ended up being the biggest story of the night, and that’s Darcy Kuemper. 

With just about a minute remaining in the first period, Predators forward Ryan Johansen went to the front of the net and was battling for position, and the next thing you saw was Kuemper’s helmet come flying off and he was in a very obvious amount of pain. Kuemper got up and immediately started trying to skate towards the bench before falling back to the ice clutching the area around his eye. 

After staying down for nearly a full minute, the Avalanche goaltender was eventually able to get up and skate off under his own power. It was a scary moment, given the way he initially reacted. Plus, if you’re talking about anything eye-related, you just hope and pray that he’s okay. It goes without saying that Kuemper didn’t return to finish the game, but the initial word is that the team doesn’t believe it to be a long-term injury, and Kuemper cleared the league’s concussion protocol. 

While Darcy Kuemper leaving the game was the biggest story of the game, and will continue to be the biggest story of this series until we get a definitive answer on his long-term availability and health, there was a really interesting game that took place aside from that.

It started in a way that I personally have never seen for a playoff game, and I’m not talking about anything that happened on the ice. As the teams took the ice for the warmups, there was a noticeable amount of empty seats in the stands. A noticeable lack of energy from the home crowd, who was getting their first taste of live playoff action this year.

In short, there just wasn’t that playoff atmosphere that you normally get, especially here in Nashville. The conversation up in the press box was that the subdued crowd probably gave the Avs a little bit of a leg up over a Preds team that was likely banking on getting an energy boost from their home fans. 

Turns out we were right, as the Avalanche came out early and jumped all over Nashville. I asked Jared Bednar this morning if his team, being on the road for the first time in these Stanley Cup Playoffs, was expecting to have to weather a storm at the start of the game, and he said (paraphrasing here) absolutely not. He said the expectation of their team is that they dictate the pace, always.

“It’s still the same sheet of ice, and the same players on it,” he said.

Just past the 8-minute mark, the first noteworthy storyline began to develop as the Avs started on their first power play of the night.

Colorado’s first unit couldn’t strike pay dirt, so that gave way to Devon Toews and company to get to work. It didn’t take long after the second unit took the ice, as Samuel Girard teed up Toews who blasted a one-timer that went screaming by Preds’ goaltender Connor Ingram. The goal was initially credited to Toews, but it was eventually changed to Artturi Lehkonen, who got a piece of the puck as it made its way through traffic in front. 

The Avs were off and running.

What little energy was in the building, quickly left, and the ice started to tilt. As the Avs began to ramp up the pressure, they forced Nashville into another penalty. 

Nashville was packing the middle of the ice in an attempt to block shots, giving a lot of room for the Avs to move the puck around the outside, which ended up being a mistake. After a few crisp passes, Gabe Landeskog one-touched a pass out front to Nathan MacKinnon, who won a battle in the crease and punched it home. 

Let’s pause here for one second. There are fewer than four minutes left in the first, and the Avalanche were 2/2 on the power play for a two-goal lead. If you’re Nashville, regardless of what you do offensively, the conversation on the bench, you would think, had to be “stay out of the box”.  Any and all good things they had done were completely undone by undisciplined play. It had changed the game. 

Old friend Matt Duchene beat Darcy Kuemper up over the glove not long before Keumper was forced out of the game, and that seemed to inject a little bit of life into the building, but even more interesting, that would be the last even strength goal scored we’d see for quite some time.  

That first intermission had tense energy to it because of the Kuemper injury, and it really disrupted the flow of everything. I had no clue what to expect when the second period started. 

An early penalty to Josh Manson put Nashville on the man-advantage, and they seized the opportunity to get back in the game. A battle along the wall resulted in a puck leaking into the slot, and Eli Tolvanen whipped a shot high on the short side past Pavel Francouz, and just like that… we were all even. 

The famous “it’s all your fault!” chants rained down from the Nashville crowd, and for the first time all night, there was real energy from the home crowd. 

The intensity ramped up from the Predators’ side and the Avalanche matched, never really giving Nashville an opportunity to capitalize on their new-found life, and eventually frustrating them into taking yet another penalty, and given the way the game had gone… you can probably guess what happened next. 

More sitting back protecting the home-plate area from the Preds meant more mesmerizing puck movement from the Avs, and this time it was a Mikko Rantanen one-timer that caused chaos in front of the net. 

After making the first, and second save, Nashville goaltender Connor Ingram couldn’t corral the loose puck and Gabe Landeskog was able to elevate his shot from in tight to get it past Ingram, restoring the Avalanche lead. 

It was at this moment that I first felt the frustration in the air for the Preds. They were battling as hard as they could, but any trip to the box set them back what felt like 10 steps, they just couldn’t kill a penalty.

 They would get an opportunity to respond less than two minutes later when Andre Burakovsky got the gate for holding, and they did just that. Roman Josi let go of an absolute bomb from the blue line from his first of the series. Normally you’d say that goalies should make the stop when the shot is coming from that distance, but this one had some heat on it, and there was good traffic in front. Things were all knotted up again. 

At this point, all of us in the press box are looking at each other saying “what is going on?!”. The two teams were a combined 5/6 on the power play, suddenly nobody could miss when they had the man-advantage.

That goal, you could tell, was a release for the Preds bench from a lot of that frustration I was mentioning just a moment ago. They were fired up.. for about 60 seconds. 

Just barely more than a minute later, Gabe Landeskog joined the rush as the trailing attacker, Nazem Kadri made a beautiful pass right on the tape, and Landeskog wired a shot past Ingram high on the glove side. 

What happened next decided the game, in my opinion. After taking an extended look at the replay, Nashville head coach John Hynes decided there was enough to go on to challenge the goal for goaltender interference. 

As Landeskog was taking the shot, Lehkonen was driving to the net and was battling for position with Mikael Granlund. Their battle took them right to the crease, and Lehkonen ended up making just a small amount of contact with Ingram as the puck went by him. It felt like an almost identical situation to what we saw in Game 2, this time though, the ruling on the ice was initially a good goal.

This meant the officials had to see clear, conclusive evidence that Lehkonen ran into Ingram under his own power, and wasn’t pushed in. I thought it was an unbelievably risky challenge for John Hynes. His team was 0/3 on the PK and had just given the lead back to the Avs.

A failed challenge meant not only that the Avs would officially be back in the driver seat, but now they get to send their red-hot PP unit back on to the ice to try and stretch that lead out. 

A quick review resulted in exactly that. The goal stood and Colorado’s top offensive guns got another chance to take control.

The power play started with a nice clear from the Preds, killing off a couple dozen seconds, but a routine dump-in ended up doing them in. MacKinnon dumped the puck in at the blue line, and Ingram came out to play it, but he completely mishandled it. To make matters worse, he seemed to panic when he felt the pressure coming, so instead of pushing it to the corner, or just leaving it for a teammate and reassuming his position in net, Ingram threw the puck blindly into the slot and right on the tape of Nazem Kadri, who had the full 4×6 empty net to shoot at. 

While 5-3 wasn’t the final score, that goal ended the game. You could see it in the Predators’ player’s body language, and you could feel it in the crowd. They had fought hard, but they just didn’t have enough left in the tank to overcome yet ANOTHER two-goal deficit. 

The third period was a defensive clinic for the Avs, giving Nashville almost nothing offensively. The crowd was out of it, and the Preds looked like they had all but given up. 

Just past the halfway mark of the third, Devon Toews caught the Predators in a change, skated uncontested into the zone and hammered a slap shot that just overpowered Ingram to make it 6-3. Fans were headed for the exit. 

Val Nichushkin would add an empty netter to ice the game, and that was all she wrote. 

It was another just stellar performance from the Colorado Avalanche. So consistent, so poised, never let Nashville get going. You’ve gotta give credit to Pavel Francouz as well, coming in cold, and getting beat a couple of times early in his appearance, but he really settled in and made a few nice saves down the stretch. 

Jared Bednar told the media postgame that Darcy Kuemper was feeling better and would “possibly” play Game 4.

The Avs now have a stranglehold on the series, with a commanding 3-0 lead, but as Devon Toews said after the game, the fourth win is the hardest to get in a series. The Predators officially have nothing left to lose, so they’re going to be leaving everything they have out on the ice the rest of the way.

With Kuemper’s status still up in the air for now, and honestly even without that, the Avs have a tall order heading into Game 4. This team has talked all season about taking things one game at a time, not looking ahead or behind, let’s see if they can block out the noise and move on to the next round on Monday.