BSN Exclusive: Behind the mask of the man that stole Game 5 for the Avalanche

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – They throw octopus on the ice in Detroit. They throw catfish on the ice here in Nashville.

Hey Avalanche fans, ready to throw some hamburgers on the ice in Denver Sunday night? Hold the pickles, hold the lettuce and ketchup maybe. Don’t want to make too much of a mess for the Pepsi Center cleanup crew, after all, because there will still be a hockey game to play at the Pepsi Center that night.

There will be hockey still on Sunday for the Avs because The Hamburglar, Andrew Hammond, came into Bridgestone Arena Friday night and flat-out stole one from the Nashville Predators in Game 5, a shocking, come-from-behind 2-1 thriller that sets up a game nobody except 19 guys dressed in white thought possible coming in.

No big deal what Hammond did in this one. Second NHL start of the entire season, in a hostile building against the top team in the league in a potential closeout game, and he makes 44 saves in outplaying Vezina Trophy finalist Pekka Rinne.

The Avs already had a Big MacK. Now they’ve got the Hamburglar back in form. Tastes good, don’t it Avs fans? Is it too late to petition McDonald’s to be the team’s official sponsor?

Actually, go ahead add the pickles and lettuce and ketchup and let ‘er fly Sunday. It would fit the theme of this series, as the Avs have messed up Nashville’s plans of a short and easy first round.

In all my years of covering this team, that was about as shocked as I’ve been, watching those final five minutes of this one. I actually went down from the press box to the areas near the locker room, not long after the Preds made it 1-0 on a Nick Bonino soccer-style goal. On the way down, I saw Preds arena personnel starting to high-five each other and talk about the Winnipeg Jets, which would be Nashville’s second-round opponent.

I watched the final five minutes on a massive TV screen in the interview room, and let’s just say there wasn’t much high-fiving going on among Preds partisans. More like slack-jawed looks that said “What in the H-E-DOUBLE-HOCKEY STICKS is goin’ on here?”

The Avs, these plucky Avs, threw the dirt off their faces, got up out of the coffin and shocked the hell out of everyone. First, Nathan MacKinnon stickhandled through traffic in a phone booth to set up Gabe Landeskog for the tying goal, 4:11 left. Then, down the ice came J.T. Compher on a 2-on-1 break, Sven Andrighetto on his left side. Compher did something the Avs were hesitant to do all night – shoot the puck – but he did here. Rinne couldn’t control the rebound, onto the oncoming stick of Andrighetto and into the net it went.

Hammond had to hold off a final minute of pure, heart-attack-inducing siege, but when the clock hit all zeroes, the final read: Colorado 2, Nashville 1.

It was one raucous atmosphere as the Avs paraded into the visitors’ dressing room. Guys bellowed and high-fived and carried on like kids just let out for summer break. Hammond took it all in with quiet satisfaction.

“I’ve had a lot of adversity over the last year,” Hammond told BSN Denver. “The one thing I can say is, the belief in myself never wavered. Obviously, I understand what the outside perception may be, but when you get a chance like this you try to take full advantage of it. I did whatever I could to stop the puck tonight and fortunately we were able to get a win and go back to the Pepsi Center.”

Hammond, 30, overcame some adversity to get here all right. After becoming the sensation of the hockey world in 2015 with the Ottawa Senators, coming out of nowhere in relief of injured Craig Anderson and going on a 20-1-2 run (1.79 GAA, .941 saves percentage), life in fantasyland came to a crashing halt. He got hurt, lost the starting job to Anderson and played poorly enough that Ottawa sent him back down to the minors, where he has pretty much stayed since.

He was something of a throw-in on the big Matt Duchene trade. A lot of people didn’t even realize he was part of the deal, because he was still playing for Ottawa’s AHL affiliate, Belleville, after the trade. Eventually, he was called up by the Avs, but only got that one start, in March against Philadelphia. He spent the rest of his time in San Antonio, and he suffered a concussion while sitting on the bench during an Avs game, hit in the head by a stick.

When Jonathan Bernier went down with another in a succession of injuries following Game 4, the Avs had nobody left to turn to but the artist formerly known as the Hamburglar.

Well, it appears there is still some meat on them bones.

“Wow, he really gave us a lift,” said defenseman Patrik Nemeth, who was terrific himself in a 23-minute effort that saw him dish out five hits and block four shots. “He didn’t look nervous or rusty or anything. He just went out and stopped them.”

Hammond was square to the puck. He allowed few rebounds, and seemed to anticipate most of Nashville’s shooting tendencies. He was particularly great in a frantic final few seconds in which Nashville looked like it might pull off a minor miracle itself and send the game to OT.

The one goal he allowed, he tried to push a Mattias Ekholm long shot to the corner, which was probably the correct play. He put it a little too close to Bonino, though, whose skate directed the puck in with forward momentum.

“I felt good. I believed I could do it like this again, but obviously it’s been a while,” Hammond told BSN Denver. “It gives you the confidence you can, and you’ve got to carry that over to the next game and prepare the same way you did for this. You don’t know when the (chance) is going to come, but all you can do is control the process of preparing. I feel like I did that. You’ll have a lot of regret if you didn’t (prepare) so I just focused on being ready and working hard.”

Avs coach Jared Bednar said after the game how he has come to trust Hammond much more in the last couple days, just by observing his demeanor. Hammond, people around the team say, gave no looks of fear after getting the starting nod, despite having started just one NHL game in about two years. A lot of goalies say the right things, but their demeanor sometimes says “Uh-oh, not sure I’m ready for this.” That apparently was not the case with Hammond. And, boy, did that show.

In Winnipeg on Friday night, fans there chanted “We want Nashville” at the end of the Jets’ closeout win over Minnesota. In Nashville, they were already starting to look up flight prices to Winnipeg next week.

Well, hold the phones Winnipeg and Smashville. The Avalanche ain’t done playing hockey just yet.

And now they’ve got hockey’s most precious commodity, a hot goalie, goes by the name of The Hamburglar.

Chew on that one for a while.