Avs pushed to the edge of elimination after disastrous first period

One of those hockey sayings you hear all the time is that you can’t win a game in the first period but you can certainly lose one. Tonight was the obvious night to apply that to as the Dallas Stars came out smelling blood with their 2-1 series lead and not wanting a repeat of Game 3 where they had to find another comeback against the Avs only to let it slip in a wild third period.

The Stars played their best period of the series in the first, scoring three goals and not allowing the Avs to get a shot on goal for the first 18:30 of the period. All five of Colorado’s recorded shots on goal game in the final 90 seconds, which was neat.

This game might most be remembered as the day the music died for Pavel Francouz being seen as a legitimate option as a starting goaltender. After posting great numbers in the regular season, he was looked upon possibly as good as Philipp Grubauer.

With Grubauer exiting in Game 1 of this series, Francouz had yet to post a quality performance. The first period of Game 4 was the dam breaking as Francouz badly fought the puck, leading to inexplicable rebound opportunities and easy goals for the Stars.

Scoring in the postseason is simply too difficult, too much of a Herculean task to allow a team freebies and on this night, you can argue Colorado allowed three free goals to the Stars. In a 5-4 loss, basic math says that’s the difference in the game, right?

Colorado had a meaningful pushback in the second period, making it 3-2 and the third period setting up to more or less decide the series. Colorado dominated play until a Tyson Jost put them back on the PK, where they have completely collapsed.

Dallas scored with two seconds left, their third goal of the game with the man advantage, and then a miscommunication between Cale Makar and Francouz gave Dallas a free goal to make it 5-2 and put the game away.

Val Nichushkin’s second goal and a Vlad Namestnikov goal with three seconds left made it 5-4 and pushed the series to 3-1.

It’s been a bizarre series where Colorado has given up three goals in the first period of Games 1 and 4 and both games eventually ended up being close. It’s felt like the Avs have been playing catch up all series but in reality they’ve had leads and they’ve had chances to claw their way back into games they were losing.

There are lots of things you can point to if you want. Character, coaching, physicality, maturity, whatever. For me, this one came down to goaltending. The Avs simply haven’t gotten anywhere close to quality goaltending during this series and tonight especially they needed Francouz to bail out a horrible effort in the first period.

He couldn’t do so and the Avs never fully recovered. It’s a team game but goaltending is always a deciding factor in a playoff series at some point. Eventually, every team needs to get bailed out by the man in net. Colorado needed it tonight, didn’t get it, and as a result their season is on the line tomorrow night.

The playoffs come at you fast.

TAKEAWAYS

• I’ve always been quick to praise Tyson Jost for things done well so it’s only fair I criticize when he’s certainly worthy. Despite not being much of a factor at all in this series, I haven’t had too much of a problem with his game on the whole. That penalty he took in the third period, though, is just a disaster. It was clearly penalty and it was clearly reckless and it firmly halted the significant momentum Colorado had built up despite not scoring on the power play to open the third period. They were down 3-2 and pushing hard on the Stars. The PK wilted again and before everyone knew it, it was 5-2 and the game was esssentially over. Jost has to be smarter than that. He just has to be. His margin of error as a bottom-six player with very limited offense is extremely thin. If you’re not going to be a net positive, you can’t be a negative. That’s what he ended up as tonight.
• Certainly this isn’t to say this is Tyson Jost’s fault. Absolutely not. It took a village to perform the way the Avs did tonight. It was a team effort of incompetence. What’s frustrating is they climbed back into it and made it interesting…before imploding yet again. The penalty kill was a concern coming into the series but giving up three power play goals is the stuff of nightmares. Losing Erik Johnson and Matt Calvert (not to mention Grubauer) certainly is hurting the PK but those guys just cannot be the difference between winning and losing in Round 2 of the postseason. There have to be other guys who can step up.
• Reinforcements aren’t coming for this Avs group. Jared Bednar said after the game that if the Avs were going to figure this out, it was going to need to be this group that did it. That said, Bednar could help himself a little by being less enamored with “experience” and more enamored with, you know, talent. I don’t think Conor Timmins or Shane Bowers or Bowen Byram are necessarily saviors in this series but if you’re going down, at least doing so with some of your more talented young players makes sense. We saw Columbus give it a try with Liam Foudy and it was great. Montreal did the same with Nick Suzuki and he cemented a job for next year. Colorado might have their own kind of answer with Timmins or Byram but fear of the unknown is holding them back from playing. That’s a garbage reason to continue playing a guy in Kevin Connauton who you’re hoping, at best, won’t hurt you on any given night. They have the talent to expect more. Give it a whirl.
• Disappointed to see the team going down like this but I don’t think they’re playing poorly on the whole. Dallas is just in that rare form some teams get into during a postseason where they’re slamming home every chance and getting a little luckier than their opponent along the way. Winning in the postseason is just so hard. It’s something I forgot about when looking at this series. Maybe the Avs got a little too comfortable, too. I don’t know. But seeing it unfold like this feels bad. Last year against San Jose, I thought the better team won. It was extremely close but Colorado could hold their head up high and say they gave it 100% and just came up short. Right now, it doesn’t feel like that against Dallas. It feels like there’s more there to give from a lot of guys. Guys like J.T. Compher, Ryan Graves, Jost, Sam Girard, Namestnikov, Andre Burakovsky, Mikko Rantanen even.
• Elimination on the line tomorrow, I expect Dallas to try to repeat the first period from tonight. Tons of energy, tons of hitting, swarming the puck and battling like maniacs. Try to finish Colorado off early and wrap this sucker up. How Colorado comes out will say an awful lot about them.
• The gaffe Cale Makar made was obviously painful and costly but it shouldn’t erase what a special postseason he’s having. It was a slow start but he’s gotten better and better and has really started to tackle the challenge of being Colorado’s 1D. The work he’s putting in right now and the opportunities Bednar is giving him is all in service of making him a true, top-flight top-pairing defenseman, the first the Avs have had since Rob Blake’s tenure. Makar is something special and it’s easy to forget this is still his rookie season. These are the growing pains necessary to create a truly great player. Tonight, however, it’s a little extra emphasis on the “pain” part.