Emotionally charged day ends with Game 3 roller coaster Avalanche victory

On a day where the sports world largely pressed pause on itself beginning with the Milwaukee Bucks deciding not to play their postseason game and focus on issues back in Wisconsin, the NHL and its players largely decided to play on.

“I don’t think I’d call those distractions,” Cale Makar said after the game when asked about his approach to playing on a day like today. “Obviously, us as players, we stand for what the NBA did. As for me, I can’t say much else than that. Obviously, we want to understand everything going on lately and you need to just listen and learn. For us as players, we’re all in the same board and we want to make change and we want to create a better atmosphere for people to come into this game.”

It was a game many weren’t sure was going to be played at all as players from the NBA, WNBA, MLS, and MLB decided to halt play for a day (maybe longer) to send a louder message. As these wildcat strikes took place in the hours leading up the NHL kicking off its slate of games, questions arose about how the league and its players would respond to the moment after making such a loud show of its support for movements such as Black Lives Matter when they returned to play last month.

While not every team across every sport chose to push pause on the games for the day, the NHL was the only active league to have 100% participation, which naturally raised questions about how serious the league (and players) was about its support.

“It crosses your mind when you see other leagues doing something like that,” Nazem Kadri, member of the Hockey Diversity Alliance, said. “We support and applaud the NBA. This is a problem that’s gone on for far too long. The signs and the hockey ops is great and everything but eventually the words get stale and it’s about action and making a difference.”

While it’s certainly fair to wonder what difference they might think they’re making by choosing not to play for a day (or more), it’s safe to assume playing as scheduled was sure not to accomplish much along the way, either. It was the player’s call, however, and they proceeded with Game 3 as scheduled.

And what a game it turned out to be.

The Avs kept themselves in the series with the mother of all emotional roller coasters as they scraped out a 6-4 win that saw them blow another two-goal lead but also overcome a two one-goal deficits.

If that sounds like a lot, I can assure you, it was most definitely was.

Coming back from a 1-0 deficit, the Avs dropped three in the second period to give themselves a nice two-goal cushion going into the final frame. Three Dallas goals later, the Avalanche went from trying to polish off an important victory to staring at a 3-0 series hole.

“For us, it’s gut-check time,” Makar said of that moment. “That’s not how we drew it up going into the third period like that. We get some unfortunate bad breaks but I think we just stuck to our gameplan and we trusted it would pull through.”

A sloppy turnover by Miro Heiskanen led to a clean odd-man rush for Colorado’s best offensive players and the old Nathan MacKinnon-to-Mikko Rantanen for a one-timer worked like a charm yet again as they tied the game and stole all of the Stars’ momentum.

“It got us all started when Nate made that great play with Mikko there on that two on one,” Makar said. “I know everybody believes in this group, it’s just being able to go out there and execute.”

Colorado executed down the stretch as Nazem Kadri’s tip of a Kevin Connauton shot was the fifth and game-winning goal for the Avs, who got an empty-net goal for Pierre-Edouard Bellemare as insurance.

It wasn’t the third period the Avalanche envisioned but they finally took one of the Stars’ haymakers and threw one of their own in response. Winning is survival in the Stanley Cup Playoffs and the Avs lived to fight for another day of meaning.

TAKEAWAYS

• Nikita Zadorov was having an excellent game but an apparent injury limited him to just 10 minutes of ice time. Jared Bednar expressed optimism he would be ready for Game 4 but if he’s not, it will be very interesting to see who their next player is in the lineup. Bednar prefers Connauton obviously for his experience but still only played him 10 minutes tonight despite being short on the bench. Would they really play Conor Timmins in this situation? How much ice time would he really get? If Zadorov isn’t ready to go, it’s going to put major pressure on Colorado’s top four remaining defenders.
• Loved J.T. Compher’s game. Heart, grit, offensive spark even if he didn’t score. A huge step forward from him from Games 1 and 2.
• Nazem Kadri is just something else when he’s on his game. He walked the physical pest line perfectly tonight and he created a spark early in the game with his energy and effectiveness. He is a joy to watch when he’s on your side but I imagine he has made very few fans among the Dallas Stars faithful. What a handful.
• Still waiting for the good version of Pavel Francouz to show up. He’s certainly not solely responsible for some of the nonsense that’s getting behind him (multiple double-deflection goals in this series already? What?) but there is very real room for improvement. It’s wild that this series is being decided by (technically) two backup goaltenders. If the series gets there, the scheduled back-t0-back of Games 5 and 6 could make for an interesting war of goaltender attrition.
• Cale Makar – 3 assists, 1 SOG, 6 hits, 3 blocked shots. Quinn Hughes? Credited with 9 hits in his entire career (85 games). Very different players that we love to compare.