Avs battle rest and rust but grab a 1-0 series lead over Blues

This morning, Colorado Avalanche head coach Jared Bednar addressed the media for what felt like the 20th time since his team last saw game action. Bednar wasn’t his usual chatty self, there were actually several times he gave one-word or one-line answers.

I asked him what he was looking for out of Sam Girard, given the way his postseason performance fell off in last year’s second round.

“The same thing he’s done for us all year,” Bednar said before turning away, awaiting another question. 

You could just tell in his tone of voice, and the look in his eye, Bednar was done talking about Round 2 and was ready for it to just get going. I thought it was probably representative of how his team was feeling, you work so hard to mentally prepare yourself for the rigors of the Stanley Cup Playoffs, and then to have to sit and just wait for over a week had to be incredibly frustrating. 

It was funny arriving at the arena ahead of game time, seeing the pom moms on the seats. You almost had to remind yourself that it was still playoff time, and to be fully honest, I wondered to myself if it was going to take the Avalanche a while to remember what that intensity felt like as well. 

I was right, but the adjustment period wasn’t anywhere near as long as some may have feared. After an up and down start, the Avalanche eventually settled into their game and knocked off the St Louis Blues in thrilling fashion, 3-2 in overtime. 

The game started with an electric energy in the building, the crowd was engaged and you felt like if the Avs struck first, the roof was going to blow off the place, and the Blues were deliberate in trying to make sure that didn’t happen.

It was slow and very controlled. It didn’t necessarily feel like either team was trying to feel the other out, but more like each team was trying to force the other to play their style of hockey. 

Just beyond the six-minute mark of the opening frame, an almost unbelievable series of bounces led to the puck landing ever so neatly on the tape of Ryan O’Reilly, right in front of the Avalanche net. Give O’Reilly a ton of credit, the puck just landed right on his stick, but he made a beautiful move to his backhand and roofed it over the glove hand of Darcy Kuemper.

We were less than 10 minutes into Game 1 of the second round, and the Avalanche were already facing more adversity than they had at any point in the Nashville Series (which really more speaks to how little adversity they faced in that opening round, but I digress). This was the first time this postseason that the Avs surrendered the first goal of the game, and we were going to get our first look at how they would respond against a much better opponent. 

As it turns out, that goal and the lead that came with it, was probably the last time St. Louis controlled anything for the entire game. The Avs just started dialing it up shift after shift to end the first. Had it not been for Jordan Binnington, and three shots that hit the post, there’s a great chance the Avalanche would have walked out of the opening frame with a multi-goal lead. 

While the Avalanche would eventually head to the room down by one, you felt pretty good about where their game was heading. 

The second period started, and the players for the Avalanche looked like they had been shot out of a cannon. They were everywhere. Relentless forecheck, pucks on net from everywhere, crisp passes, great support defensively, you could tell that if they were playing with that type of speed and pace, it wouldn’t take long for them to get one past Binnington. 

Sure enough, just three minutes in, Mikko Rantanen did a great job winning a puck battle down low, walked out of the corner and threw a puck on net and who else but Val Nichushkin, comes streaking through the slot to pick up the rebound and punched home his third of the playoffs. The building came back to life, and the Avs were officially off and running.

I talked to some folks recently, and we had the discussion of how much home ice really matters anymore. Given the way teams prepare, and the way coaches adjust in real-time, how much impact does it actually have on the game?

In the minutes following the Nichushkin goal, it was clear to see why you can easily find plenty of people who think it still matters a lot.

The crowd seemed to energize the team, and the team’s play seemed to energize the crowd. The Avs were absolutely buzzing. Just like the first period, give credit to Binnington, that score could have easily gotten away from the Blues, but he made save after save. 

I started to feel the same way I did watching Game 2 of the Nashville series. I felt that as long as the Avs just kept doing what they were doing, the pucks would eventually go in. I mean, it’s not like they were giving St. Louis much of anything going the other way. You had to believe that after all these chances, one would go eventually. 

You remember I mentioned at the beginning of this piece, I asked Jared Bednar this morning what he was looking for out of Sam Girard in this series. It’s no secret he struggled last year against Vegas, and it’s also no secret that a lot of folks pointed at his “disappearance” as a reason the Avalanche couldn’t get past the Golden Knights. 

Tonight, Girard looked like he had spent the past year reading articles, listening to podcasts, and scrolling twitter just reading and listening to everything that people said bad about him, and was out to prove them all wrong.

He was great. Girard was active in the offensive zone, made smart reads coming back, good heads-up plays, didn’t shy away from physicality, and he got rewarded just over the halfway mark of the game. 

The Avs got the puck deep, won a race, won a puck battle, cycled the puck around, and Girard walked off the point and hammered one that looked like it just overpowered Binnington. In all honesty, that’s probably one that Binnington wants back, he had a clean look at it, and the puck was along the ice the whole way. Big credit to Girard though, he got all of that shot. 

With the crowd even more behind them, the Avs continued to control the ice, but couldn’t find that next one. 

As the third period started, the general chatter you heard was that the Blues were beyond lucky to find themselves down by only one goal, they had been outplayed by the Avalanche for most of the night, but were still just one shot away. 

There was twice… maybe three times in the third period where the Avalanche had an opportunity to stretch their lead out, but just couldn’t get it to go. You worry if you’re the team up by a goal in these situations. When you have that many chances to ice a game, but just can’t do it, you leave yourself open for something silly to cost you your lead. 

After Devon Toews got called for a pretty ticky-tack holding penalty, you had the feeling this was that silly moment. Sure enough, as time was about to expire on the man-advantage, Jordan Kyrou corralled the puck in the slot and was able to sneak one past Darcy Kuemper.

Despite having clearly outplayed their opponents, the Colorado Avalanche found themselves in a deadlock on the scoreboard with the end of regulation fast approaching. 

I mentioned it was a tacky-tack call on Toews, well the officials returned the favor with less than two minutes remaining when Brayden Schenn was called for a high-sticking minor, but it wasn’t fully clear what happened in the replay. I won’t re-litigate the call, as the Blues were able to kill it off, so it didn’t really have an impact on the game. Either way, the Avs let yet another golden opportunity to close the game out slip away, and you really started to wonder if they were going to be on the wrong end of a heartbreaker.

Really though, overtime brought more of the same that we had seen all night, just dominance from the Avs. All over pucks, and putting shots towards the net from everywhere on the ice. 

Less than halfway into the first extra frame, on the tail end of a great shift for Colorado’s “second line”, Gabe Landeskog worked the puck from low to high, and Josh Manson made the play of the night in my opinion. 

Manson loaded up to shoot, but hesitated for one extra second. He had picked his head up to see that he had no lane to the net. His shot would have hit the shin pads in front of him and potentially sprung a rush the other way (shades of Ryan Graves). Manson throwing that pump fake, and waiting one second longer before whipping a wrist shot on net opened just enough of a lane through a maze of bodies, and Binnington never even saw it. 

It was just picture-perfect patience, you couldn’t draw it up any better. From Josh Manson, no less. Look, I think Manson has been really good since arriving in Denver, but how many folks out there had him circled as the OT hero? Not many would be my guess. 

The Manson/Girard pairing was lights out all night, and it was awesome to see them both get rewarded with big goals. 

I put a piece out yesterday, talking about how there’s a confidence that is following this Avs team around right now. A calmness to their game, they just don’t look rattled by the moment right now. Every bounce was going the Blues’ way, and the Avs had probably earned a better result than they had gotten heading into overtime, but they just kept battling. 

They kept doing the right things, the things they had been doing all game. They didn’t get frustrated, and once again trusted that following their process would eventually lead them where they wanted to go. 

It’s one win out of the four the Avalanche need to get into the Western Conference Finals, still a steep mountain to climb, but after eight days off, Jared Bednar has to be pleased with the start he got out of his group.