Myriad of mistakes lead to the end of Colorado's season in Game 6 loss

Colorado’s season ended Thursday night with a 6-3 loss in Game 6 against the Vegas Golden Knights. The first four-game losing streak of the season for the Avalanche ended up costing them their chance at the Stanley Cup as the Avs once led 2-0 in the series and watched it all slip away.

The Avs were significantly better than their awful performances in Games 3 and 4 in Vegas but too many mistakes cost them and Philipp Grubauer’s worst performance of the series came at the absolute worst time imaginable.

Colorado once again opened the scoring early on as Devon Toews took a Nathan MacKinnon feed and put it past Marc-Andre Fleury but that was the last time the Avalanche would hold a lead this season.

The Avs were resilient, pushing back and tying the game after being down 2-1 and then 3-2, but the fourth Vegas goal that came in the final seconds of the second period was absolutely killer.

After a dominant start to the series, Grubauer got progressively worse as the season wore on and tonight was arguably his worst postseason performance as an Avalanche goaltender.

The goal given up by Grubauer to Nick Holden is one of the softest goals you’ll ever see in the NHL, a gift from Colorado’s netminder to erase all momentum the Avs built with the game’s opening goal from their top line, the exact combination Colorado needed in this game.

Colorado got what it needed offensively after failing to score more than two goals between Games 3 and 5, two of which were 3-2 losses. The Avs got it late in the second period and still entered the third period down 4-3.

Starting in period two of Game 2, Colorado essentially played whack-a-mole with their problems. Effort was an issue in Game 3, then execution in Game 4, then backbreaking mistakes in Game 5, and then, finally, as if to complete the set, leaky goaltending in Game 6.

That’s a recipe for a series loss and Vegas was just too good of a team for the Avalanche to overcome their mistakes. It’s a credit to a great Vegas team, who is now off to make mincemeat of an overmatched Montreal team that has Canadiens believers dreaming of 1993.

For most of this year, Colorado fans were dreaming like it was 2001 all over again but in the end, it was more of a 1998 vibe. Either way, Colorado’s last Conference Finals appearance came in 2002, the longest of any team currently in the Western Conference, and tonight pushed the reset button on their work to get into the round of four.

There will be time for reflection in the coming days and weeks but Nathan MacKinnon’s predictably surly postgame press conference provided the quote that will follow them into next season.

“There’s always next year. That’s all we talk about I feel like. I’m going into my ninth year next year and I haven’t won shit.”

As a writer, I’m jealous at just how succinctly he put it.

TAKEAWAYS

• We’ll get to more on this series in the coming days, with some deeper dives into numbers and maybe a film room or two on what went wrong against Vegas. There’s a lot to this one but the end result is that Colorado was as close to full health as they could reasonably hope to be and still couldn’t get across that finish line. No Nazem Kadri all series absolutely hurt them, but nothing hurt the Avalanche more than the Avalanche themselves. Self-inflicted mistakes were the deciding factor in this series and Vegas simply covered theirs up better than Colorado did. Brutal way to lose. It’s the kind of series loss that you can comfortably say the team was good enough overall but in the situations of the series, they just didn’t handle their business well enough.
• Jared Bednar taking the blame for the loss and saying he’s the head coach and this is on him came across pretty powerfully. It wasn’t so much what he said but the way he said it that struck me. He’s always been a “buck stops here” kind of guy but you could tell he was really contemplating his coaching mortality when answering. He clearly wants to coach THIS team and after watching some of the coach-organization relationships around the league fray throughout the season, it was notable to me how much he seemed to be making a case for him staying. I don’t think he’s in trouble but he will be a year from now if the results don’t improve. That’s just reality. The players seem to love him and he clearly wants to be here but this isn’t a feels business, it’s a results business. I think he’s earned one more year and then we’ll see.
• Colorado has been big on its identity but this series really exposed the importance of Erik Johnson to this club. I don’t think size is so much the issue that Sam Girard has as he’s kind of a one-trick pony and his lack of size can get exposed hard in a postseason series where teams really get after him. On the other hand, he’s a great player who can give you high-value play during the regular season. Johnson’s presence would have been a very welcome addition as his combination of size, skating, and playmaking ability would have been a huge boon over either Patrik Nemeth or Ryan Graves, whose struggles were magnified by a maniacal Vegas forecheck and every mistake seemingly ending up in their own net. It’s hard not to imagine adding Johnson and Byram to this defense and getting another year of development from Cale Makar, Girard, and Conor Timmins and thinking this group has the goods to get it done. Talent-wise they’re among the league’s best already but they’re going to need improved play from some of these guys.
• Grubauer was on his way to forcing Colorado’s hand with his play all season and into the playoffs. The reality is, however, his play in Games 4-6 just wasn’t very good. He got a free pass in Game 4 because the team in front of him was just so bad but he couldn’t paper over just one of the big mistakes the Avs made in Game 5 and then flat fell apart in Game 6. He looked shook and Colorado’s season ended immediately. The easy decision for everyone is to run it back again with Grubauer making legit starter money but he left the door open for the front office to at least have the conversation.
• I’ll forever hate that this was a second-round series. It should’ve been a conference finals. I hope they get Vegas next year. I might have a problem.