MacDonald column: Mistakes and “mental errors” doom Avalanche in loss to Vegas

Well that right there, ladies and gentlemen, was playoff hockey. The back-and-forth, the on-edgeness, the drama. All of it. But in the end, the Avalanche finally met their match against the Vegas Golden Knights Saturday afternoon in a game dominated by “greasy, industrious hockey,” as NBC’s Eddie Olczyk so poetically put it during the game’s broadcast.

The result of this blue-collar game was a loss for the Avalanche, which means Colorado claims the second seed in the Western Conference. The Avs now draw the No. 7-seeded Arizona Coyotes in what will be their first taste of real meaningful, consequential playoff hockey.

“Obviously losing today sucks, but we’re the No. 2 seed in the West,” Nathan MacKinnon said after the game. “We’re not in a bad spot. We’re feeling good heading into the first round.”

No, not in a bad spot at all. But for head coach Jared Bednar, he made it known over the past week or so that he wanted that home-ice advantage that would’ve come with winning the No. 1 seed. And while it’s not your traditional home-ice advantage (obviously), there are still some benefits, namely for coaches like Bednar who get the last line change of the game, as part of the advantage of being the top seed.  

Bednar attributed Saturday’s overtime loss to Vegas to a series of “mental errors” and a lack of that “sharpness” that he — and we — haven’t come to expect from this Avs team in a while (yeah, “in a while” has something to do with the team being off from March 12 to this past week). He mentioned this quite a few times during his 10-minute media availability following the game.

“I don’t think (Vegas) made the big mental errors and the big mistakes,” Bednar told Colorado Hockey Now. “We gave up some chances that you just shouldn’t. We got on the wrong side of pucks, gambling for offense, and they didn’t. They checked for their chances in overtime and they got more than us.” 

Bednar also called MacKinnon’s unsportsmanlike conduct penalty another mental error, which resulted in a power-play goal to put Vegas up 2-1 at the start of the second period. Despite mental blunders like that and the ensuing loss, Bednar admitted he wasn’t in the slightest bit disappointed in his team’s effort against Vegas. But he was willing to admit it wasn’t his team’s best game.

“You have to give Vegas credit…To be honest with you, I didn’t think it was our best game. There was a long feeling-out process it felt like. I think we were OK, we had the right intentions, but it wasn’t our best game we played so far,” Bednar said. “I liked our stick-to-itiveness, we stayed with it, kept chipping away and finding a way even in the end with the 6-on-5 was good…we just got caught sleeping on a couple of plays over the course of the night.”

And you can’t get caught sleeping in playoff hockey. That’s the difference between a win and loss, and luckily this game had no sort of elimination implications. Every game from here on out, they will.

“We had our chances. Lehner played great. We had about 40 shots but they’re a fast team, they stay above pucks, we didn’t execute to the best of our best ability,” MacKinnon added. “We feel like we have another gear. Nothing to take away from (Vegas), but we feel like we could’ve buried more of our chances and could’ve put the game away.” 

The effort was good today, I thought. Even when the Avalanche didn’t play great, they still played pretty darn well and almost won. The Avalanche faced three one-goal deficits and fought back every time, including a J.T. Compher equalizer goal with just over a minute to go in regulation. 

But it wasn’t quite good enough.

“That’s how the playoffs are, that’s how you score goals,” a quiet Compher said after the game.

MacKinnon and Compher, the two players made available to the media in the building (that would be our Dater, and nobody else from the United States hockey media corps) and the Zoom crowd back home, looked like they both swallowed a bug after the game. But Bednar had a more upbeat tone, both in his facial expressions and his actual words.

You watch, though, Bednar might be more critical in the next day or two, after he watches the tape. He knows the Avs didn’t work hard enough, even if he tried to accentuate the positive to the media.

“You know, I look at the game and we’re talking like we lost and that our game was poor and I don’t see it that way, I don’t see it that way at all,” Bednar said. “For most of the game we were doubled up on shots-for and we were doing some good things. 

“If we were expecting this thing to be easy, then we’re in the wrong tournament. This is going to be work and that’s a real good hockey team and I thought we did a good job for most of the night. I’m not really that disappointed in our game. I know we could’ve been better and it would’ve been nice to win, but we didn’t and now we’re moving on, we’re getting ready for an opponent here come Tuesday or Wednesday.” 

Now things start getting real fun. But, in hockey, fun usually only comes from hard work