Avs, Blues trade injuries and goals in exciting Game 3 Avalanche victory

We knew that the Round 2 matchup between the Colorado Avalanche and the St. Louis Blues was going to be an interesting one. We knew we would see back and forth games, physical play, and constantly shifting momentum. 

As the series shift to St. Louis for Game 3, we got all of those things and then some.

While there were plenty of fun storylines to follow in this one, we have to start with the not-so-great one. Before we get to the result, a 5-2 win for the Avalanche, or how we got there, we need to talk about Sam Girard and what happened less than two minutes into the game. 

Sam Girard hadn’t even logged one full minute of ice time before he went back behind his own net to retrieve a puck along the end wall, where he was subsequently crushed by the forechecking Ivan Barabshev. His face hit the dasher (the “shelf” on the boards) and his head hit the ice with a lot of force. Girard stayed down for over a minute (I’m gonna circle back to this), before very slowly leaving the ice with the help of Matt Sokoloski, the Avs’ head athletic trainer. 

Sam Girard was taken to a local hospital for further evaluations and it was announced by Jared Bednar after the game that Girard has a broken sternum, and is done for the balance of the postseason. Right now, the hockey implications are completely irrelevant, we’ll have plenty of time to discuss what this means for the Avs on this ice, you just hope he’s ok long term. 

The hit itself, I don’t know, to me… it really didn’t look “dirty”, it just looked unnecessarily violent. 

I know, some of you out there are rolling your eyes. It’s hockey, it’s inherently violent. I know. I get it, and I’m usually with you. It’s a fast, physical sport and sometimes things happen. The reason I’m a bit iffier on this one in particular is the “how” and “when” it happened. 

To me, it didn’t look like Barbashev ever really had much of an intention to pursue the puck, he looked like he was purely wanting to come in and lay a big hit, which is the “when” part of my problem with it. The collision took place less than two minutes into the game, and it seemed to me like Barbashev was trying to lay as hard of a hit as he could as a way of getting the crowd and his team engaged early. 

Again, I don’t think it was an illegal hit, Barbashev wasn’t assessed a penalty and in my opinion that’s ok, I just think it wasn’t really contributing to the game, and now someone is seriously injured. Not what you want to see.

Ok, I said I was gonna revisit the time while Girard was down, and that’ll be the last I say about that situation. While Sam Girard lay on the ice, near motionless, the fans in the building broke out in a very loud “Let’s Go Blues” chant. Look, I am not some old-school “hockey purest”, but I really didn’t like that look. 

When someone is down injured, especially that seriously, the competitive nature of the game gets put on pause, and the injured player needs to be shown some respect. Maybe I’m overreacting, but that one just didn’t sit right with me. Alright, let’s move on. 

So that was, more or less, how the game started. A jarring way to kick things off for the Avalanche for sure, and things didn’t immediately get much better for them. 

About two minutes after Girard left the ice, Colton Parayko absolutely hammered a shot from the point that deflected off of Devon Toews and beat Darcy Kuemper. The Blues had the lead early, and the building was jumpin’. 

St. Louis upped the pressure after that, they could tell the Avs were a bit rattled by everything had unfolded so far, and were trying to capitalize. Darcy Kuemper was rock solid though, he kept them in it when things maybe could’ve gotten away from them early. 

So all the craziness of the first 4 minutes happens, then right as you think we’re settling into the game, Nazem Kadri and Calle Rosen both raced for a loose puck right in front of the Blues netminder Jordan Binnington, the two collided and both went careening into Binnington at 6:45 of the first period.

This time it was Binnington who stayed down on the ice. Initially he got back up without any help, but then he went to test out his lateral movement. He went back down, almost kind of collapsing to the ice.

A St. Louis trainer jumped off the bench and ran to the net. He and Binnington talked for about 30-45 seconds, and it looked like Binnington was maybe waving him off, but then as he went to test moving laterally again, he buckled again and really looked to be hurting. 

That was it for his night. Enter Ville Husso. 

We were less than 10 minutes into the game and already had a goal and two key injuries, one for each team. It was a wild start. 

So that was the first 10 minutes, and I’m sure you’re saying to yourself “wow that sounds crazy, I’m sure things settled down after that”. Not really. 

The Avs were shorthanded as we hit the halfway point of the period, the Blues had one the league’s best power plays in the regular season, and it has already cashed in for them in this series, so this was a golden opportunity to extend the lead. 

Colorado had a great kill, gave the Blues almost nothing in terms of quality looks. As the penalty to Josh Manson was expiring, Darren Helm collected the puck in his own zone and looked up ice for any kind of play to make. 

He spotted Manson coming out of the box behind several Blues forecheckers and flipped the puck high to the far blue line. It was a great heads-up play by Manson to glove it down while staying onside, then he made a brilliant pass to Logan O’Connor who had gotten in behind the Blue D.

A quick little chip play and the puck was in the back of the net. O’Connor was skating in his first game of the series and found a way to make a huge impact early on to get his team even. The Avs were off and running, and it showed in their play. 

Cale Makar said after Game 2 that he felt like the team just didn’t really have their legs, and those sentiments were echoed by many others.

Tonight, that Logan O’Connor goal got their legs moving and the Avs started to tilt the ice ever so slightly in their favor. 

The first period ended at 1-1, and while many folks in the building were focused on the health of each team’s respective players, the Avalanche had to be pleased with where they were in the game. 

On the road, in a tough building, down a top-4 defenseman, and you go to the locker room tied? You’ll take that all day long. 

The second period seemed to ramp the intensity up. Both teams were skating and both wanted the next goal, but the most unpopular man in the building was the one who got it. 

Well, unpopular amongst Blues fans that is.

Right as an Avs power play was expiring, Mikko Rantanen whipped a puck cross-ice to Cale Makar who fired a one-timer on net, only to have it tipped in by none other than Nazem Kadri.

The Avalanche bench loved it, and the building hated it.

I think it was a combination of the natural momentum boost you get from a goal, plus feeding on the hostility of the crowd, but the Avs really got going after that goal. 

They started hemming the Blues in their own zone for longer and longer stretches, while simultaneously preventing the Blues from getting much going on the other end of the ice. 

Just about four minutes after Kadri gave his team the lead, Artturi Lehkonen decided he wanted in on the action.

After a great point-blank save from Darcy Kuemper, Nazem Kadri (of course) gave Lehkonen a pass that he could skate into, springing a quick 2-on-1. Lehkonen held the puck all the way down into the circle before ripping one high over the glove of Ville Husso to give the Avs a 3-1 lead. 

It had been a great period for the Avs, and they had been rewarded for their efforts, things were looking good as we were barreling towards the second intermission. 

Then right as it looked like the Avalanche were in the clear, they fell asleep at the wheel for 60 seconds, and Ryan O’Reilly made them pay. Suddenly it was a one-goal game heading into the final frame. 

You winced a bit because you knew that as well as they had played, somehow the Avs were just one shot away from being in a deadlocked game on the road, and you just knew the Blues were going to come out flying. 

Well, they did… but Colorado completely neutralized them. It was a textbook defensive performance for the last 20 minutes. Nothing but smart plays, great structure, and good decisions. They gave St. Louis nothing to look at, and nothing ever really felt threatening. 

As we closed in on the final minutes, St. Louis coach Craig Berube tried multiple times to get his goaltender to the bench for an extra skater, but Colorado’s smothering defense made it almost impossible for him to do so. 

He finally just had to call him to the bench when it seemed like the Blues had gotten the puck deep, but right as he got to the bench, here comes Nathan MacKinnon and Gabe Landeskog with speed through the neutral zone. 

Husso was caught in no-man’s land and kind of half attempted to make a play on the puck, but MacKinnon slid it calmly over to Landeskog who scored probably the easiest goal of his career, and that was pretty much all she wrote for this one. 

Lehkonen would add another empty-netter in the final minute, but that was really just icing on the cake, this one was over. 

It was the exact type of bounce-back performance you wanted to see from the Avs, they were really good all over the ice and battled through some adversity. They needed a game like that. 

After the game, drama unfolded near the locker rooms as Jordan Binnington walked by Nazem Kadri’s live postgame interview and tossed a water bottle at him. It’s not like this is particularly egregious, but Binnington has a track record of just not acting like a professional and doing silly little things like this. I don’t like it and I think it’s a bad look for the game, but no real sense in making too much of it here. 

It was a great road win for the Avs, who took back home ice. It looks like it’ll be an off day for them tomorrow, then back at it on Monday as they’ll try to replace their performance from tonight.