Avalanche season comes to an end in another Game 7 disappointment

In 2014, there was a deafening “ping” when Nino Niederreiter ended Colorado’s season with a Game 7 overtime winner. In Edmonton tonight, there was just silence.

Dallas got a hat trick from Joel Kiviranta, including the series-winning goal in the first overtime period to end Colorado’s season in a 5-4 heartbreaker in Game 7.

For Avs fans, the way the drama unfolded evoked memories of that Minnesota series back in 2014 when Colorado kept scoring and getting one-goal leads and the Wild kept climbing back into the game and tying it up, including a late goal in the third period to force overtime.

The same happened in this one. After Dallas scored just minutes into the game, Colorado built and watched leads of 2-1, 3-2, and 4-3 all disappear. The killer was the 4-3 lead as the Avalanche scored with just under four minutes left in the third period to regain the lead.

It lasted 10 seconds.

A miscommunication and fumbled puck by Nazem Kadri on the ensuing faceoff led to an odd-man rush for Dallas and Kiviranta scored his second of the game to tie it up, leading to his overtime heroics.

It’s a gut-wrenching loss for a Colorado squad who fought so hard to erase a 3-1 series deficit despite mounting injuries and playing the final three games with third-string goaltender Michael Hutchinson in net.

Despite all that, Colorado put themselves in position to send Dallas packing and move on to the western conference finals. They simply couldn’t close and a clearly heartbroken Nathan MacKinnon, whose 14-game playoff point streak ended with his only pointless game of the entire bubble, was left trying to explain what went wrong.

“I think our thoughts are pretty obvious,” MacKinnon said. “We felt like we were outplaying them in overtime and it was coming. We felt good. We just got hemmed in, boys got gassed and they made a nice play. It was tough. Two straight years, Game 7, one-goal losses. It’s tough. We’ve got to find a way to breakthrough. There’s no moral victories. We came here to win and we didn’t get the job done.”

This was a group that spent all season raising the bar internally and trying to continue building a certain level of accountability based on championship expectations. No longer were they simply happy to be there or looking to cause a little trouble along the way. They were they to win it and they fell short in an even more brutal fashion than last year’s Game 7 loss in San Jose.

“Absolutely,” MacKinnon said when asked about being a team that believed it could go all the way. “I know it’s not the Cup Final or anything but we felt like we could win and I still feel like we could have won everything. It’s just unfortunate. I would have liked to see our team fully healthy, that’s for sure. We lost a lot of key guys. That’s just the way it is. You can call it an excuse or whatever you want but that’s just the way it is. We lost key guys to our team. That’s part of our team. Obviously, it just sucks we caught the injury bug again. We got it all year. But yeah, it stings. Our motivation, too, was win this game, get guys back, keep making our run, keep pushing. It’s unfortunate.”

While the Avalanche still overcame the injuries to the tune of having two separate one-goal leads in the third period, they definitely looked gassed by the end as the bench shortened up and the injuries took their toll on a tired group.

Colorado was missing essentially a starting lineup as regulars at forward Gabe Landeskog, Matt Calvert and Joonas Donskoi were out up front and Erik Johnson and Conor Timmins were out on the back end. Both of Colorado’s regular goaltenders, Philipp Grubauer and Pavel Francouz, were out with injury, leading to Hutchinson to man the net in three consecutive do-or-die games.

They certainly showed plenty of heart along the way but games they let slip away from them earlier in the series came back to haunt them as the series wore on and faced with the final moments of playoff destiny, Colorado blinked first.

If MacKinnon had his way, he wouldn’t make any changes to the roster and run it back while simply hoping for better luck on the injury front.

“I just would have liked to see us with a fully healthy team all series,” MacKinnon added. “That being said, we could have played better. We had it in our hands. Up 3-2, up 4-3, we just couldn’t keep it out of our net. They kept buzzing and tying it up. In terms of assessing our team, I don’t think we should change anything. If we have the exact same team next year, I feel like we can win it next year. I love the group of guys we have. It’s unfortunate we keep catching this injury bug. We gotta find a way to stay healthy. Some bad luck as well. I don’t know. Like I said, I wouldn’t change anybody on our team. I think we’re good enough to win.”

Anybody who watched that series could tell you they were good enough to win. They just simply couldn’t get over the hump. The Stars capitalized and earned their passage into the third round against the Vegas Golden Knights.

As far as next year, training camp is tentatively scheduled for November 17 and a December 1 opening night. Tentative is the operative word as word around the league is that those projections remain very optimistic. Per usual, MacKinnon summed it up best.

“I don’t even know when next season starts.”

After another heartbreaking finish, it’s probably for the best right now.

TAKEAWAYS

• Like so many of you, I am emotionally spent. It was a taxing series and I’ve been dealing with off-ice issues as my fiancee battles some health issues (good vibes for her, she’s awesome and deserves them) so my takeaways from this one are going to be pretty short. Evan, Rudo and I will dig a little deeper into what went wrong in this series next week after the holiday weekend has lapsed before we transition into full-blown draft and free agency previews.
• The bottom line for me was pretty simple in this one. They led 4-3 in the final four minutes of the third period. They couldn’t close. They couldn’t kill a single penalty. They couldn’t muster enough quality on their own power plays to get across the finish line. They came up short in so many facets that this one will haunt them for a long time.
• If there’s any solace, it’s that you certainly didn’t have much confidence in this injury-riddled group going up against the power that is Vegas right now. Hutchinson going head-to-head against another backup in Anton Khudobin is one thing but the two-starter monster in Vegas would have provided a significantly different kind of challenge. As much as I would have loved to see what MacKinnon could do with another round, I didn’t have a ton of faith in their ability to have a competitive series against the Golden Knights without some major roster reinforcements, which Jared Bednar said after the game were very unlikely to come.
• Is it better or worse to watch a relative unknown such as Joel Kiviranta (????) be the hero of Game 7 or would a more well-established villain (Benn? Pavelski? Perry?) been a better candidate? Personally, I don’t care but it was a postgame discussion among some. Kill a damn penalty and none of this matters.
• All love to our readers and listeners. We’re crazy about y’all and we have some really cool stuff planned for the draft. We were hoping to put it off for another couple of weeks but look for that to start trickling out in the next few weeks. We’re hoping to really bring y’all a different look to some of our coverage after this holiday weekend and when we reset a little bit. I’ve been told to go on vacation but I’m still deciding. Either way, DNVR Avalanche will continue to push out plenty of content. Thank you so much for making all of this possible. It wouldn’t hurt like this if we weren’t all so invested in trying to see something special together.