Adrian Dater
EDMONTON, ALBERTA – What a happy bunch players of the Colorado Avalanche looked in warmups before Game 1 of their second-round series Saturday night. Everybody from the last few games was present and accounted for, and even Vladislav Namestnikov was out there. Matt Calvert, in the warmup, did a Lambeau Leap into either Ian Cole or P.E. Bellemare (I can’t say for sure which one it was, but that’s a thing they all do) and all just seemed right on point for the Avs as they headed back to the dressing room.
Then, the lineup sheet comes out and Matt Calvert’s name is nowhere to be found. What happened from the time of that Lambeau Leap to the time of the opening puck drop? How could a hearty warrior like Calvert suddenly be “unfit to play”, as the Avs officially declared? A few minutes after that, with the Avs already down 2-1, Erik Johnson blocked a shot and limped badly off the ice, missing the rest of the period.
Johnson, a true warrior of a player, was back on the ice to start the second. Good news! A few minutes after that, No. 1 goalie Philipp Grubauer needed help off the ice, unable to put any weight on his left leg whatsoever. His season looks done, folks. He’s had hip-groin problems at times this season, and while we don’t – and won’t – know exactly what is wrong with him, the video doesn’t lie. He pulled or tore something.
I am in Edmonton, as you know (the only media person from the United States here at all, in fact) and so I can hear stuff in the building. When Grubauer went down, I could hear his yell all the way up here at my seat atop section 214. That was not fun to hear. That was one of those yells that made an already quiet building even quieter.
Later in the period, EJ hobbled off again. He is a true gamer, but you could tell from his first shift of the second that he was still in pretty bad pain. He did not return to start the third period but, ever the warrior, he returned with 16:40 left in the period, emerging from the tunnel to the Avs’ bench. However, he wound up only being there for moral support. He never played a shift in the third.
Injuries were the biggest problem all season for the Avs. Every player on the top two lines saw some time on the injured list at some point, as did guys like Cale Makar and Grubauer. But it was starting to look like the Avs finally had some good luck for a change on the health front. Not anymore.
Now, the Avs have to move on in the playoffs with the playoff-unproven Pavel Francouz in goal. I think Frankie is a fine goalie, but we’ll see if this stage is just too big for him, too soon. He made some nice saves in relief of Grubauer, but that softie he allowed to Roope Hintz with a little more than 11 minutes left in regulation was a total killer. I thought the Avs were picking up their game by then and might be ready to get the equalizer, but that goal just deflated all the gathering momentum.
Now it’s down to Francouz and, gulp, Michael Hutchinson as your top two Avalanche goalies in the playoffs. This, of course, is if Grubauer is out long-term.
I asked Avs coach Jared Bednar after the game if Grubauer will be lost long-term, and the furthest he would go was to say that he didn’t “expect” him to be on the ice at practice tomorrow. Bednar did say that a reinjury-tweak of his previous injuries would be “bad news.”
Injuries just always seem to strike the Avs at the worst times. Just off the top of my head, I can recall several killer playoff injuries, like the loss of Milan Hejduk in the 1999 playoffs against Dallas, to a broken collarbone after a hit from Richard Matvichuk. Peter Forsberg lost his spleen after the 2001 Western semifinals, though that powerhouse team was still able to win a Stanley Cup. I still remember the shock of NOT seeing Forsberg in warmup prior to Game 1 of a second-round series in 2008 against Detroit. He’d seemed just fine the day before at practice. Suddenly, he was gone, with another groin pull. Goalie Jose Theodore, who was playing great entering that Detroit series, got some kind of horrible stomach flu before Game 1 and couldn’t leave the hotel. Calvert himself missed a couple of key games in the playoffs last year, against San Jose.
But the Avalanche can’t feel too sorry for themselves. Dallas has been playing without its No. 1 goalie, Ben Bishop, for a while now. Yet, they’ve soldiered on with Anton Khudobin. Now, the Avalanche have to do the same with Francouz. Everybody is playing hurt this time of year. The NHL playoffs have always been something of a battle of attrition.
It’s just my observation, but it seemed like the Calvert “unfit to play” diagnosis threw this team for a loop at game time. Suddenly, the rusty, ineffective Namestnikov was in the lineup. The fourth line that has been so good for Colorado in these playoffs was now missing a very key member. Calvert isn’t just a very good depth player, he’s a guy who is great in the dressing room and on the bench as a veteran sounding board.
Indeed, Bednar said “We missed him” when asked about Calvert. Because you only get one or two questions after the game to either a coach or players, I chose to ask my two about Grubauer and about what Bednar thought was the biggest thing that went wrong with his team’s game.
Bednar, always pretty blunt, said “half the team” were passengers and that “our brains were turned off.” He said Dallas came to play and his team didn’t, and he said it’s on him as a coach and on the players to figure out a way to nip that in the bud.
Teams can just get away with the “unfit to play” thing now and keep everyone in the dark about any kind of injury. In these Covid-19 times, you just have to accept that. You never really know much about NHL injuries in the playoffs, anyway, but why Calvert couldn’t play is a mystery straight out of Agatha Christie.
Dallas is a very good hockey team. They are very big, have a dynamic first line and two real studs on defense in John Klingberg and Miro Heiskanen. They really had the Avalanche hemmed in their own zone for much of the time, with a good forecheck. The Avs looked sloppy and disorganized from the word go.
Captain Gabe Landeskog said much of the Avs’ problems were “self-inflicted” and “you have to bring your best every night, and tonight we sure didn’t.”
Said Nathan MacKinnon, who scored two goals and was far and away the Avs best player: “They did a great job forechecking, creating turnovers. I think we kind of felt it out instead of coming out firing and imposing our will against them. I felt like we just kind of put our foot in the water and wanted to see how they would play. We know how we need to play. But it’s going to be a tough series and they’ve got to beat us three more times and we’ll be well prepared for Game 2.”
It’s only one game, and the Avalanche can definitely beat that team if they stop it with the horrible turnovers and lazy plays, such as Namestnikov failing to get the puck in deep on a line change, which partially was responsible for that first Dallas goal. The second line, led by Nazem Kadri, was pretty much a no-show, and D-men such as Cole, Ryan Graves and Nikita Zadorov had rough, rough days.
This series ain’t over by a long shot, but now the Avs are faced with some real adversity, on and off the ice, for the first time in these playoffs. This is where all that vaunted depth is supposed to kick in.
Game 2, on Monday, would be a good start.