"It was men against boys today": Avalanche blowout pushes Arizona to the brink of elimination

“You got me all fired up, Calvy.”

Sitting in the middle of the table at the postgame presser, Nathan MacKinnon added a little extra after Matt Calvert talked up MacKinnon’s one-sided fight with Christian Fischer in the third period of Colorado’s 7-1 decimation of the Arizona Coyotes.

Why was MacKinnon fighting in a game that had already been decided? Because it’s what you do when you’re a team and MacKinnon was living up to the “A” on his chest by delivering a message after Lawson Crouse sent Cale Makar face-first into the boards, a very dangerous hit that fortunately left nobody injured.

The Avs, and especially MacKinnon and captain Gabe Landeskog, did not care that Makar was fine or that in his own postgame presser took responsibility for putting himself in a vulnerable position. All that mattered was letting Arizona know that liberties were not going to be taken against Colorado’s skill players.

MacKinnon dragged Christian Fischer out of the scrum and proceeded to take his proverbial lunch money in a schoolyard-style shellacking that left MacKinnon standing over his downed opponent like Muhammad Ali looking down on Joe Frazier letting him know who the greatest was.

“I think Fischer cross-checked the wrong guy in the face,” Calvert said. “You saw what Nate did to him. He absolutely manhandled him. He probably could’ve thrown 10 punches and knocked him out. Not the right guy to do it to.”

There was still a hockey game that took, place, however, and this was just the physical manifestation of a scoreboard clobbering that was nearing its completion. The lopsided win only counted for one in the series total, pushing Colorado ahead 3-1 and making Wednesday’s Game 5 an elimination game for the Coyotes.

“Listen, we’ve all in life been embarrassed before,” Arizona head coach Rick Tocchet said. “I can’t tell you a guy that played well. We were embarrassed. It was men against boys today.”

Coming in off an unlikely Game 3 victory on the back of Darcy Kuemper making 49 saves on 51 shots, things picked up right where they left off with Colorado creating scoring chances at will and Kuemper keeping the score close while the team in front of him haplessly flailed about.

Then the floodgates opened.

And closed only when the third period had come to its merciful end.

A three-goal outburst in the first period put the Coyotes badly behind the eight ball and instead of responding at any point with improved play, Colorado just continued to pour it on as the mismatch this series has been throughout finally had a hallmark game to show just what a large disparity there really is between these two clubs.

“This whole bubble thing, it’s who wants to stay,” Tocchet said. “You can tell who wants to go home. For this game, it looked like we wanted to go home. We’ll see next game.”

There were greasy goals from Matt Nieto, Matt Calvert, and Nazem Kadri. There was a highlight-reel goal from Cale Makar. Mikko Rantanen scored a stat-stuffer of a goal on a perfect deflection that nobody will remember in four hours.

It was just one of those games where Colorado showed why they are the Stanley Cup contenders so many of us believe them to be. When they’re on, they can just pour on offense in a way very few teams in the NHL are capable of. Tocchet had an even more succinct description of the game.

“It was just a total debacle,” Tocchet said.

While Colorado head coach Jared Bednar praised his team for leadership and sticking with its process and the players avoided providing any meaningful bulletin board material for Game 5, it would seem a six-goal deficit did all the talking necessary.

Colorado will have up to three chances now to end Arizona’s season beginning on Wednesday afternoon.

TAKEAWAYS

• From the podcast on Saturday: “We haven’t seen that Avs offense yet since the bubble started and this was a team that a fourth of their regular season games they scored more than 5 goals. Like I’m feeling like a beat down is on the way.” It was nice to see the Avs respond in the way both Rudo and I thought they would. Another nail-biting third period and anything could have happened with Arizona absolutely believing they were still in this series. The Avs still have to win one more game to finish this one off but given their general dominance in this series, they should be able to get it done.
• This series hasn’t been close and for only the second time in four games, the score reflected the play. Game 2 was close but Colorado finished. Game 4 was another ass-kicking but the score finally reflected it.
• There were so many guys who played well today that it’s tough to single anybody out but it felt appropriate the fourth line started the scoring. It’s been all about the stars and Mikko Rantanen struggling and Nathan MacKinnon playing great but not having that HUGE game yet or Cale Makar being relatively quiet. I genuinely think the fourth line getting a hard-working, greasy goal (it was off Nieto’s skate and touched nothing else) helped put them at ease. They came out flying and were staring down the barrel of another 0-0 game headed into the first intermission despite absolutely dominating play. Then Nieto’s goal happened, Arizona got tight, the Avs took a deep breath, and absolutely blew them out of the game the rest of the way.
• He didn’t have to do a lot but credit to Philipp Grubauer in this one. He was asked to do very little overall but Arizona had one very good scoring chance on an ugly turnover in the first period when it was still tied and he made a big glove save. That’s exactly the shot that gets by that puts the Coyotes ahead and they tighten up defensively and then the Avs are in the Game 3 meatgrinder. Instead, Grubauer made the save, the Avs smashed through the Darcy Kuemper brick wall and never looked back. A big save for him.
• Not enough you can say about Colorado’s mentality. It would’ve been easy to get down on themselves and try to make big changes. They just kept doing their thing and stuck to the game plan, however, and it paid off. There weren’t major changes needed. We’ve seen this now across the league. Joonas Korpisalo had one of the great goaltending performances of all-time and Columbus is down 3-1 in their series. Both 12 seeds stunned the five seeds in the Qualifying Round behind, in part, good goaltending and both are now trailing in their series. Goaltenders can make a massive difference in small doses but across a best-of-seven? It’s tough for clearly inferior teams to win four games. There’s a reason all of Montreal, Chicago, and Arizona would have missed the playoffs entirely without the Qualifying Round. It turns out you need (a lot) more than an elite goaltender to be a dangerous team.
• Cale Makar is starting to heat up. Good luck with that, Arizona.
• Funny MacKinnon and Fischer weren’t giving penalties for fighting. I guess the officials didn’t feel like MacKinnon dragging Fischer out of the pile and then ragdolling him like a punk wasn’t really a “fight.” Fair enough.