An impressive Opening Night for the Avalanche

Has an NHL team ever gone 82-0-0 before?

Plan for the parade, Mayor Hancock. Get your bets down for the Avs and the Stanley Cup at Bovada, folks!

Ah, the optimism of Opening Night — especially when plays out as it did for the Avalanche in their 4-2 win over the Blackhawks Wednesday at Ball Arena.

They jumped out to a 3-0 lead in the first 9:34 on goals by Jack Johnson, Gabriel Landeskog and Bo Byram and went from there.

The party was on — at least for the Avalanche fans in the building.

“Probably the first 10 or 12 minutes of the game were almost a script in terms of our effort, energy and execution, and real good emotional engagement,” said assistant coach Ray Bennett, assuming the spokesman role in the absence of Jared Bednar, still exiled because of a positive COVID-19 last week.

“Then, as that period went on … we have an issue with our team a little bit over the course of time with managing the puck when you have success. That’s really something that we have to try to be better at, and that showed up in the game a little bit as it went on.”

Indeed, though, the final score was misleading.

In the Windy City, televisions went off as the late-starting TNT game — 9 p.m. Central Time — progressed.

At one point, the Avalanche had a 17-2 advantage in shots on goal, peppering Marc-Andre Fleury. They ended up with a 36-34 edge, and Darcy Kuemper ultimately was both busy and staunch in his regular-season debut in the Colorado net. The highlight was when he foiled Kirby Dach on a breakaway midway through the second period.

And the Avalanche overcame the absence of not just Bednar, expected back for Saturday’s game against St. Louis, but also Nathan MacKinnon, who tested positive for COVID-19 on Monday. His status seems to be more up in the air.

Nazem Kadri slid up to the top line, centering Landeskog and Mikko Rantanen, and scored the fourth Colorado goal.

“Obviously, when guys are out, other guys have to step in,” Kadri said. “The guys I’m playing with make it easy. Mikko and Gabe are great players. They’re going to make the right play and I just have to fit in and play my game. It was nice to have that opportunity and it was nice to come out with a win.”

The two goals from defensemen involved the Avs’ oldest (Jack Johnson) and youngest (Byram) players, 34 and 20 years  old, respectively. Byram, who played 19 games with the Avs last season, got his first NHL goal to make it 3-0. He also had an assist on Kadri’s goal.

“I was really excited,” Byram said. “Obviously, it’s something you dream about for a long time. It’s also nice to get it out of the way, get the pressure off.”

Where’s the puck going to go?

“I don’t know,” Byram said, laughing. “We’ll have to see. My mom will probably steal it.”

Byram is paired with Erik Johnson, the other half of the Avs’ Johnson & Johnson, which has come about because Jack made the roster after coming to camp on a pro tryout deal. With Devon Toews destined to miss the first part of the season in the wake of summer shoulder surgery, that gave Jack Johnson a better shot at sticking.

And he not only stuck, he scored the Avs’ first goal of the season…and he celebrated as if he were, well, a 20-year-old scoring his first career goal. (For the record, it was Johnson’s 72nd.)

“I’m just excited to be part of this team,” Jack said. “You come into a new team, you always want to get off on the right foot. I had a pretty fortunate opportunity there. I’ll take it.”

Bennett and Nolan Pratt, who handles the D-men, adjusted to Bednar’s absence. It was the head coach’s third game away from the team, including two exhibitions.

“It’s a little bit, it’s not too much,” Bennett said. “We’ve been able to stay in contact with Jared and he’s done some video work and so it’s just a question of sort of taking Jared’s responsibilities and splitting them between Nolan and I. We brought (skills coach) Shawn Allard on the bench and he did a little bit, so it’s certainly more and lots, but we’ll get Jared back soon.”

About 20 percent of the crowd went home disappointed.

That’s assuming the Blackhawks fans in the Ball Arena seats were headed home in Denver, or back to Arvada or Greenwood Village or Bailey or Longmont or (fill in the blank) and were not returning to their hotels before catching flights to O’Hare or Midway on Thursday morning.

Seriously, are any of the visiting team fans at Nuggets, Avalanche or Rockies games actually visiting, too?

Are there any tourists who came to Colorado to see their favorite franchises on the road and go to, say, the Buckhorn Exchange or Casa Bonita?

(I left out the Broncos, because that’s  the one league where many of the visiting team fans are on their own road trips.)

The Avs next face the Blues at home Saturday.

Terry Frei (email: terry@terryfrei.com) is a Denver-based author and journalist. He has been named a state’s sports writer of the year seven times in peer voting — four times in Colorado and three times in Oregon. His seven books include the novels “Olympic Affair” and “The Witch’s Season.” Among his non-fiction works are “Horns, Hogs, and Nixon Coming,” “Third Down and a War to Go” “’77: Denver, the Broncos, and a Coming of Age” and “March 1939: Before the Madness.” He also collaborated with Adrian Dater on “Save By Roy. He was a long-time vice president of the Professional Hockey Writers Association and has covered the hockey Rockies, Avalanche and the NHL at-large. His web site is www.terryfrei.com and his bio is available at www.terryfrei.com/bio.html