Resilient Avs-Stars Game 5 Studs & Duds

The Colorado Avalanche stayed alive with a 5-3 win over the Dallas Stars in Game 5. These are the Avs Studs and Duds from the game.

Studs

These two fans behind the Avalanche bench

These two guys were hilarious. One of them dressed as the famous woman who sits behind Stars coach Pete DeBoer sometimes and the other nailed his Jared Bednar cosplay. A hearty laugh was had. Sports should be fun.

Cale Makar

Through 32 minutes of this game, it appeared Miro Heiskanen was in the process of once again outplaying Makar by a lot. Heiskanen had just scored on a 2v0 on the power play (see below) and given the Stars a 2-1 lead. The building was rocking and the Stars could sense the end of Colorado’s season.

Makar had had enough of that for the night, however, and gave the kind of superstar response you expect from him. His goal to tie the game at 2-2 is the kind of goal only he scores regularly. No other defenseman consistently manipulates traffic in front and moves his body one way while shooting against the grain.

To do that and put the puck where he did? There’s a reason when you watch it back that you don’t see Jake Oettinger react at all when it goes in. It’s a perfect shot through traffic.

His second goal is fun because the move he puts on Tyler Seguin is exceptional. He badly dances him and then beats Oettinger five-hole to give the Avs a 4-2 lead. It’s a bad goal for Oettinger to allow, but the way he set Seguin up by stepping to the inside and hard cutting back outside gave Makar the shooting lane.

That’s nightmare fuel for Seguin because it’s a lose-lose proposition. If he doesn’t try to cut Makar off inside, then Makar still skates by him and is in the middle of the ice. If he does what he did, the quality of scoring chance goes down. It’s the right play, his goaltender just let him down.

Defensively, Makar’s primary matchup was against breakout star of the postseason Wyatt Johnston and it did not go great for Makar. He survived it and thrived elsewhere as Bednar was able to get him on the ice against the fourth line of the Stars far more often than he should have been able to but there’s still a concern that Makar’s work in his own zone is lagging behind expectation.

Tonight, however, he was a superstar on offense and the rest didn’t matter much.

Artturi Lehkonen

Lehkonen had the kind of night I normally reserve for the “Unsung Hero” category where I like to put players who contribute both positively and negatively to the outcome, but this is my space and I make the rules so he’s here instead.

The bad with Lehkonen was a cross-checking penalty that we’ll politely call questionable and the heinous breakdown on the penalty kill that sprung Jason Robertson and Heiskanen for the 2v0.

The good began with his goal with 0.6 seconds remaining in the first period. My favorite part of that goal is that Lehkonen had just missed a one-touch play from Mikko Rantanen but still thought to find the soft spot in the PK coverage. The finish is great, but it is the hockey smarts that I most appreciate in the development of the play.

His assist on MacKinnon’s goal is more hockey IQ on display. With under four minutes to play in a one-goal game, Lehkonen recognized that once his avenue to the net was removed, he needed to prioritize puck possession and reload. That patience allowed him to find MacKinnon and seconds later the Avalanche had their fifth goal of the night.

All of that is great, obviously, but it’s the last sequences that get me amped up, too. On the PK immediately after that MacKinnon goal, the Avs were just trying to survive a strong Stars push. Every second was vital and Lehkonen made life difficult on the Stars.

It started with him outworking Benn just inside the blueline and getting the puck down the ice and ended with him blocking a Harley shot and then diving to swat the puck down the ice. There was a missed clear in there, too, so it wasn’t perfect by any means but this is a monster PK effort by Lehkonen. Good stick, indeed.

Duds

Yakov Trenin

This is entirely about his injury. If we’re being honest, he’s been the only player on that fourth line who has consistently found a positive impact as both Andrew Cogliano (despite his points) and Brandon Duhaime have struggled to show up this series. Losing Trenin meant Colorado ran essentially three lines for the final two periods. Here’s hoping Trenin goes full Wolverine and heals quickly.

Colorado’s third pairing

Jack Johnson and Sean Walker badly struggled as a pairing in this game. In 8:43 of ice time together, they allowed 14 shot attempts and generated just four, which is pretty terrible!

In about two minutes away from Walker, Johnson was on the ice for three shot attempts for and zero against. We’re obviously dealing in very small samples here, but Johnson only played 10:57 so it’s fair to say the coaching staff wasn’t thrilled with his play.

Walker didn’t get much more at 14:24 but away from Johnson, he was on the ice for four shot attempts for and two against. It’s not overwhelming but given the very hit-or-miss results of Sam Girard and Josh Manson on the second pairing, I’m wondering if Bednar might be better served trying to go with Girard-Walker and Johnson-Manson.

There are obvious drawbacks to both as that second pairing would be small and lack any physicality and the third pairing would lack any puck-moving acumen, but Colorado’s third pairing was close to unplayable they were so awful in this game.

I’m open to the idea that Bednar will better be able to protect this pairing in Denver with the last-change advantage but if this comes back to Dallas for Game 7, it is something to keep an eye on.

That Dallas PP goal

What the actual hell is this? Both Lehkonen and Sam Girard completely blew this. This is shockingly bad.

Avs Unsung Heroes

Nathan MacKinnon and Mikko Rantanen

Let’s talk for a minute about these two guys. They are legitimate superstars and their volatility in this series is a major reason the Avalanche are down 3-2 but their play tonight is a major reason their season didn’t end.

I’ll start with MacKinnon. I’m fast-forwarding to the fifth goal because it was the dagger that sealed this game away.

It starts with MacKinnon beating Jamie Benn on a faceoff and you can see their faceoff numbers in the game at the start of the clip (thanks, ESPN!). That’s a big win for MacKinnon no matter how you slice it, but Josh Manson getting it up the ice to Lehkonen created a nice chance.

Lehkonen does an excellent job when he sees he’s cut off by Benn and Esa Lindell. Where I’m confused is with Benn, who circles around to a meaningless piece of ice. Lindell didn’t have the puck and wasn’t in a puck battle, so providing support there doesn’t do anything for them and it opens up a ton of ice for MacKinnon.

It ends predictably with MacKinnon scoring and restoring the two-goal lead to Colorado. This was Colorado’s top line flat-out outplaying Dallas.

Let’s move on to Rantanen.

The go-ahead goal early in the third period begins with Rantanen getting a puck deep and going to work in the corner. This wouldn’t normally be notable but the Stars scored a big goal already in this series because Rantanen got lazy on trying to get a puck deep.

The fun really begins with the puck battle in the corner and Rantanen hits Chris Tanev and then obliterates Joe Pavelski. As Zach Parise wins the puck out of the corner, Pavelski is slow to get up (presumably because he just got run over by a moose).

Colorado gets the puck out high to Sam Girard and Rantanen goes to the front of the net. Instead of actually playing hockey, Pavelski is more focused on trying to get revenge on Rantanen for the huge hit, causing chaos in front of the Dallas net.

Parise makes a great play to try to bat the puck out of the air and into the yawning cage and Casey Mittelstadt gets lucky on the finish as it hits the post and Jake Oettinger’s skate and into the net, but all of this started with the physicality of Rantanen. That’s a key element for Rantanen because when properly engaged he is one of the league’s true power forwards but he just hasn’t been that guy very often this series.

Now, both of these guys are down here because their offensive exploits were critical but the other areas of the game still included ugliness. MacKinnon combined with Devon Toews (he had plenty of issues of his own tonight) for a terrible failed clear that became the third Dallas goal and Rantanen took an inexplicably dumb penalty right after MacKinnon made it 5-3, opening the door for the dangerous Stars power play to attempt to stage a comeback.