Another Heimlich maneuver stops a potential Avs choke; Avs now 5-0-0 after hanging on against Caps

WASHINGTON – Sorry, but that headline was just a little too easy. Promise I won’t go to that easy well of aquiferous metaphor again.

The Colorado Avalanche were going to have a one-time four-goal lead cut to one with two minutes, six seconds remaining in Monday’s weirdly-scheduled game with the Washington Capitals. Plenty of time for the Avs to give up one more goal and see the game come down to another nailbiter.

But a 5-4 game stayed 5-3, thanks to another successful coaching challenge by the Avs, led by video coach Brett Heimlich (above). Actually, Matt Nieto is the one who first piped up on the bench that Washington’s T.J. Oshie was offside leading to a Caps goal that would have made it a 5-4 game. But after Avs coach Jared Bednar and his assistants – which includes Heimlich from the back room looking at every blue-line opposing entry like a Hubble telescope – saw the play again on their iPads, the challenge went up.

The video review war room in Toronto, once the sworn enemy of the Avs or so it seemed, confirmed it: Offside, no goal. If the challenge had been unsuccessful, not only would it have been a 5-4 game, the Caps would have gotten a two-minute power play.

It was the kind of game, Avs veteran Erik Johnson said, “Where we’d find ways to lose in years past.”

Not only have the Avs still not lost on this season – 5-0-0 – they have only trailed in one game so far. Now that’s pretty remarkable. From lines 1 through 4, D partners 1 through 6, goalie 1 through 2 and coaches that extend to off the ice, the Avs are looking like a truly formidable team now.

“We’re feeling it right now. I think guys are feeling good about ourselves,” said Johnson, who got the party started in the first period with his first goal of the season as part of a 4-0 onslaught in the game’s first 10 minutes. “We got one and then got a couple others. Sometimes when you get one early, it can kind of shake a goalie’s confidence a little bit.”

The Avs had a 3-0 lead on their first three shots, by the 7:54 mark of the first. That was enough for Caps coach Todd Reirden to yank starter Braden Holtby from the net. The Avs would add three more goals, including a huge Nieto goal with 4:24 gone in the third after backup Ilya Samsonov gave the puck away behind his net to Tyson Jost, who fed Nieto. That made it a 5-2 game, but Washington scored with 2:21 left (Alex Ovechkin bomb from the point past Philipp Grubauer) and looked like they had it to 5-4. But Oshie clearly entered the Avs’ zone ahead of the puck, after it hit an Av and cleared the zone. Oshie was still caught in the zone when the puck re-entered, making it offside.

The Avs got two successful challenges against Boston the other night in their 4-2 win.

Did Bednar have any doubt the challenge would succeed?

“As soon as they had (the replay) up, Matt Nieto said ‘that has to be off.’ So, we called ’em (referees) over. We just had to make sure that, when they shot it in and it hit our guy’s leg, that it did come back out and clear,” Bednar said. “It came out by probably a foot and Oshie was still (inside the blue line). We didn’t have any doubt once we challenged it and got the two looks at it.”

Said Johnson, “I was on the bench. You could see it was offside. The puck was out and he was down in the zone. You could tell from the bench. Brettsky, the Heimlich maneuver is three-for-three.”

Heimlich, by the way, is a fifth-year video coach with the Avs after spending nine years in San Jose. S

As noted before, this 5-0 start has been a real team effort.