Frei: Now, we find out what Kuemper is really made of (+)

After the Avalanche’s 5-4 shootout loss to the Predators Thursday night, Jared Bednar saw little reason to dig for deep analysis.

“I would say the difference in the hockey game, to be fair, is that ‘Kemps’ had an off night,” Bednar said.

We all know whom he meant.

Goaltender Darcy Kuemper.

The man known as “Kemps” — wait … a hockey nickname not ending in “y”? — allowed 4 goals on 37 shots through the 5-minute overtime before the Predators’ Matt Duchene had the only success in the three-round shootout.

Nashville got closer to claiming the Western Conference’s first wild card spot and making it more likely the Avalanche will be matched against Dallas in the first round of the playoffs next week.

The bracket will be firmed up Friday night, when the Stars are at home against the Ducks and the Predators are on the road against the Coyotes.

Bednar also ran through a long list of missed opportunities to beat Predators’ backup goalie David Rittich, stepping in for the injured Juuse Saros.

Then he circled back.

“But the difference is that ‘Kemps’ didn’t have a great night,” he said. “It can happen. I’d rather it happen now than in the playoffs.”

This still is a veteran goalie attempting to quiet doubts about whether he can be the man — as in, “The Man” — in a Stanley Cup championship run. That’s not “fair,” but it’s out there, and Thursday night’s performance will do nothing to quiet them.

He has a tough act to follow — one from his childhood.

In June 2001, Kuemper had just turned 11 when the Avalanche beat the Devils in Game 7 of the NHL Finals and won the Stanley Cup for the second time.

In his native Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, young Kuemper already exclusively was a goaltender. No experimentation at other positions for him.

“The first time I played it, I liked that I didn’t have to leave the ice and go on the bench,” Kuemper said this week. “That’s what drew me to the position.”

His favorite NHL goalie?

“I really looked up to Patrick Roy growing up,” he said.

Shocker.

He had the Roy hockey cards to prove it.

Kuemper admits he only vaguely remembers that Game 7 celebration in Denver, including Joe Sakic’s touch pass to Ray Bourque, whether from as it happened or from pictures or video.

The championship experience was familiar by then to Roy, who previously was on two Cup winners in Montreal and also in 1996 in Colorado.

Yet it never got old.

So as Kuemper gears up to go into the 2022 playoffs as the Avalanche’s entrenched No. 1 goalie, the postseason standards are high.

They always are for NHL goaltenders, of course.

In pro sports’ most mentally and physically testing postseason, the pressures are relentless.

Here, the comparisons to Roy are unavoidable.

The fiery Roy wasn’t flawless, whether at Montreal or in his eight years with the Avalanche.

Yet he was the best “money” goaltender in the history of the NHL.

He had the knack of realizing the playoffs were a body of work, and that the off nights should either be completely forgotten or used as bounce-back motivation. They didn’t shake his confidence. His teammates, too, knew that and waited for him to get right back in the heads of opponents the next game.

Roy and Kuemper play one of the rare positions in sports at which selfishness and sometimes grating egoism are fuel.

When their teams win, they get a W — and that’s why Roy so hungrily sought the NHL’s career win record. Did he allow fewer goals than the guy at the other end?

When Roy suddenly departed as Avalanche coach in August 2016, he blindsided even his close friends.

Bednar, also a Saskatchewan native who moved around the province because his father was an often-transferred Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer, has stepped in and done terrific work after a rough first season in the chaos of transition.

That said, I believe it would have been interesting to see Roy coach Kuemper, to try to get championship-caliber goaltending out of him.

Kuemper’s easy-going, Mr. Happy personality, at least off the ice, might have frustrated Roy and caused him to attempt to stoke his fires. Kuemper’s break-his-stick outburst when he was pulled after allowing three goals against Calgary in early March was surprising because it was so uncharacteristic.

At times, the affable goalie from Saskatoon seems as if could fit in the cast of the iconic Canadian sitcom, “Corner Gas,” set in the fictional rural Saskatchewan town of Dog River. The town’s recreational hockey team was the Dog River River Dogs. (I’m guilty of finding a way to mention the dry-humor classic with the flimsiest of justifications.)

Kuemper finished up his regular season Thursday night.

Pavel Francouz is scheduled to start Friday night’s final game at Minnesota, with Justus Annunen on the trip to serve as the backup.

After a rough start, Kuemper had a strong season, playing a career-high 57 games. His record is 37-12-4, with a 2.54 goals-against average and a .921 save percentage.

But here’s the thing about this league.

None of that matters. Not even an off night as the schedule winds down.

Well, none of that matters except perhaps as a means of earning the faith and trust of his teammates in his first season with the Avalanche after the trade that brought him in from Arizona. (He can be an unrestricted free agent on July 1, too, so he’s playing for his next contract — from somebody.)

“We as a team need to do better in terms of creating less traffic in front of him, giving him the best chance to stop the puck,” Cale Makar said. “That’s when we’re best as a team and he’s the best as well. No, he’s been a rock for us and we have the utmost confidence in him going into the playoffs, that’s for sure.”

Even as Kuemper turned it around this season, that talk — from NHL coverage studio desks to end-of-the-bar stools — persisted that goaltending might be this team’s postseason Achilles’. I was among those initially skeptical, and I even wondered if Francouz might end up the playoff starter. (Wrong.)

Some of Kuemper’s s teammates still remembered his 49-save, stood-on-his-head effort in the Coyotes’4-2 win in Game 3 of the bubble-enclosed Western Conference first round two years ago. They’re hoping he plays like that from start to finish for Colorado in the 2022 playoffs. Or that he does what Philipp Grubauer didn’t do last year in the second-round flameout against Vegas. That’s step up at the potentially series-turning time of crisis and stymy the opposition.

“I’m feeling good and ready to start playing the big games,” Kuemper said.

I brought up that relentless pressure and asked Kuemper if he reveled in it.

“Playoffs are so fun,” he said. “I think you just have to shut out the outside noise and just kind of cherish the moment. Playoff hockey is what you obviously grew up dreaming of playing. It’s the most fun time of year so you just kind of go out and cherish the moment.”

The Avalanche’s four-game losing streak in the stretch was a hiccup, not a four-alarm crisis. Now the Avs at least have points in three consecutive games heading into the season-closer at Minnesota. Avs’ management likely would prefer to send the Colorado Eagles to St. Paul for that one, but it’s not possible. They’ll settle for leaving a few guys in Denver for nights off.

“We’ve had a great season,” Kuemper said. “We’re excited for the next chapter here. I think all year we’ve been looking forward to the playoffs and no they’re right around the corner. I think there’s a lot of excitement in the room and we’re just ready to get going.”

He said part of the mental test is to not get too caught up in the expectations.

“I think that’s why you kind of approach the game the same way, all 82 regular-season games,” he said so when you get to those big games, your habits are in place. You focus on that and have the same approach you would in the regular season.”

The approach might be the same.

The pressures aren’t.

Terry Frei ([email protected], @tfrei) is a Denver-based author and journalist. He has been named a state’s sportswriter 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 five non-fiction works are “Horns, Hogs, and Nixon Coming,” “Third Down and a War to Go,” “March 1939: Before the Madness,” and “’77: Denver, the Broncos, and a Coming of Age.” He also collaborated with Adrian Dater on “Save By Roy,” 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