The Avs went from "Fire Bednar" to fire extinguisher

They don’t call them growing pains because they feel good.

When the Avalanche last won a playoff series, Jose Theodore was backstopping them past the Minnesota Wild, who was were still in just their seventh season of existence. Nobody really knew at the time Colorado was on the verge of collapsing into irrelevance in the NHL for the next decade.

They were still a year from drafting Matt Duchene, who was supposed to be the face of the next successful era in Avalanche hockey. Instead, the player who would finally lead them out of the cycle of occasionally making the playoffs and losing in the first round was just 12-years-old and still five years from being drafted first overall when the final horn sounded on Colorado’s 2008 series against the Wild.

There were a lot of losses after that spring of 2008. There were a handful of wins along the way, sure, but nothing that really resonated with a fan base that was getting increasingly frustrated with not watching their team make deep runs in the spring.

Even this year’s version of the Colorado Avalanche did their best to hide their worst intentions. They casually took two months off in the middle of the season, going a ghastly 6-17-6 across a 29-game stretch that would have ruined their playoff chances in the majority of seasons.

This year, however, was ripe for a flawed underdog to use the regular season to do some soul-searching and find themselves at the last possible moment. A 5-3 loss to the lowly Anaheim Ducks on March 15 seemed to doom Colorado’s hopes. They sat six points back (the lead would grow to seven before they played again) and it took until the 81st game of an 82-game schedule for them to secure their spot in the postseason tournament.

Their fortunes saw them matched against the Calgary Flames, who won the western conference with relative ease and faced just one problem entering the postseason: was their goaltending good enough to get them through multiple rounds of the always-brutal Stanley Cup Playoffs?

It turns out, the Avalanche gave them a whole more than just one problem. Mike Smith, to his credit, answered the bell the first four games of the series. He opened the series with shutout filled with highlight-reel saves, especially snappy glove saves that showed off the supreme confidence he was playing with.

And then Nathan MacKinnon took over.

MacKinnon and Colorado were angry about their lackluster game one showing and responded with fury, burying Smith and the Flames in a whirlwind of shots on goal that finally broke the best Smith had to offer. Colorado’s split of the series gave the Avalanche home-ice advantage and the upstarts nobody gave a chance used the thin air in Denver to show the world they weren’t simply happy being here this year.

“Make no mistakes. We’re going in there to win this one,” Jared Bednar said in a press conference shortly before the series began.

It took a game for Colorado’s on-ice swagger to match that of their coach but once it did, the Flames were nothing more than roadkill for a determined Avalanche club. A team that once fell into a predictable trap of failing once they finally found a little success, this club continued writing their own story.

Going into game five with a 3-1 series lead, the Avalanche still hadn’t made believers out everyone yet. Winning the fourth game is always the hardest, after all. Colorado set out to do just that early on with a two-goal first period.

A failed clear in the final seconds of the first turned into a Flames goal, cutting the deficit to one goal and giving the hometown crowd something to cheer about. Calgary’s hard push early in the second period was met with one from Colorado, and two Colin Wilson goals put the Avalanche firmly in the driver’s seat with a 4-1 lead heading into the third period.

A fifth goal reinforced what became plainly obvious in the fifth game: Colorado was simply the better team and they had better places to be. It was time for the Flames to get to steppin’.

Where Colorado succeeded in this series was shutting down Calgary’s stars, especially Johnny Gaudreau, who scored 99 points during the regular season. He added just one (!) in the five-game series and nothing showcased his struggles more than the series-clincher tonight when he had a penalty shot and breakaway stopped in the first period and a goal disallowed for goaltender interference in the second period. The man the world won’t stop calling ‘Johnny Hockey’ had become ‘Johnny No-Show’ with eyes the size of dinner plates every time he tried to cross the Colorado blue line with the puck.

On the other side, Colorado’s stars were humming along like they were still putting on showcases against the dregs of the league. In this series, I guess they were.

From growing pains to growing gains.

Takeaways from the game

• Colorado’s top guys gave them plenty of scoring but the depth was there, too. Overall, the Avs outscored Calgary 17-11. Colorado’s 17 goals all came in games 2-5 while the Flames failed to score more than two again in the series.
• Mikko Rantanen’s nine points in the series give him a career total of 15 in just 11 playoff games. Nathan MacKinnon finished the series with eight points, pushing his career totals to 24 points in 18 games played. These are elite players producing at the biggest stage.
• Colin Wilson tossed in a three-point night of his own as he continues to make an impressive case for a job next season, if not in Colorado than certainly elsewhere. He had a strong series for the Avs and the two-goal performance in the clincher is the kind of big-game performance that teams love.
• One of the big question marks when the Avalanche acquired Philipp Grubauer last summer was if he could handle the playoffs. He was pulled after two games in the first round last year and there was serious doubt whether he could elevate his game in the postseason. Grubauer’s steady brilliance overshadowed the theatrics on the other end of the ice from him and he locked it down after giving up three goals in game one. Safe to safe he emphatically answered that one.
• With Columbus beating Tampa Bay and Colorado eliminating Calgary, it’s the first time in the expansion era both number eight seeds won in the first round. History!
• Colorado faces either San Jose or Vegas after this series. Vegas currently leads the Sharks 3-2.