Terry Frei
After the Avalanche’s 5-4 overtime loss to the Blues in Game 5 of the Western Conference semifinals Wednesday night, Jared Bednar ran through a long list of mistakes his team made, including on sequences that led to St. Louis goals.
I asked Bednar if the mistakes cost them the goals, or did the Avs need to get better goaltending … or both?
Confession: The “or both” gave Bednar a way to soften his answer about Darcy Kuemper. I should have stopped at “goaltending.”
Bednar might have gone this direction, anyway, but he obviously didn’t want to throw Kuemper — who allowed five goals on 35 shots as the Avs blew leads of 3-0 and 4-3 — under the Zamboni. He had more mistakes to mention, and did so, emphasizing Kuemper had company in having off nights.
Game 5 ended with former Denver Pioneer center Tyler Bozak beating Kuemper with an eminently stoppable long shot at 3:38 of overtime, and the Blues were within 3-2 in the series.
“Both,” Bednar said. “Like I think you can group ‘Kemps’ in with our team, in the third period especially. We did such a good job in St. Louis of just continuing to play our game with the lead, and we’ve done that pretty much all year to be honest with you. And then all of a sudden, late in the game when they were putting on their push, it looked like we were handling it well for a little while … But then the late turnovers, swinging around in the D zone, cost us.”
Bednar indicated that if the Avalanche seemed to be trying to sit on the lead, that wasn’t dictated by the coaching staff.
Bottom line: Kuemper has to be better. Much better.
Bednar was asked if he was considering a goalie change to Pavel Francouz for Game 6 Friday night in St. Louis. It was a reasonable question that needed to be asked. (Thanks, DMac.)
Bednar’s answer was succinct.
“No,” he said.
For much of the playoffs, Kuemper has been, well, OK, and even has made some clutch saves at critical times to help secure wins.
That’s his job.
In this instance, each goal seemed to get softer.
In eight playoff starts, he’s 5-2, with a 2.50 goals-against average and a .904 save percentage.
He missed Game 4 of the first-round sweep of Nashville after the Predators’ Ryan Johansen nailed him through his mask and in the right eye with a stick.
It’s so easy — and often the cliched or lazy way out for those grasping for angles during series — to blame the goalie. I’ve tried to do it sparingly, but this time it’s unavoidable.
Even this high-octane team is going to need saved-their-bacon goaltending some nights if Gabriel Landeskog is going to take the handoff of the Stanley Cup from Gary Bettman in late June.
So far, Kuemper’s mercurial play has left the impression that at this point, he’s not up to it.
Can you see him outdueling the Lightning’s Andrei Vasilevskiy in the Finals?
Me, neither.
Tampa Bay’s two-time defending Cup champs are talented and deep, too, so the possibility of pedestrian Avalanche goaltending being good enough to be part of a championship is slim.
The Av’ goaltending — whether from Kuemper or Francouz — has to at least harken memories of the sort of money-time play in the net that No. 33 in the rafters provided for a stacked pre-cap roster.
Ever since Kuemper came to the Avalanche from Arizona in an offseason trade, he has been cited as the possible Achilles in a Cup run. It’s not that anyone was saying he was awful. He isn’t and in stretches of this regular season, he was pretty darned good.
I’m not writing him off.
The Avs still will win this series. Well, I’m pretty sure they will. I won’t go along with the single-game, roller-coaster overreaction to wins and losses. They still will advance to the Western Conference finals for the first time in 20 years.
Beyond this series is the issue … if the standard still is Cup or Bust.
It is, isn’t it?
MacKINNON’S HEROICS
An unfortunate kicker to all of this Wednesday night was that Nathan MacKinnon, previously without a goal in the series, awakened with a hat trick and finished it up with a spectacular end-to-end rush for the goal that put Colorado ahead 4-3 at 17:14 of the third. It didn’t hold up.
MacKinnon was glum when he and Landeskog were the two players made available to the media.
His hat trick?
“It doesn’t matter,” MacKinnon said. “Looking to get a win. I was happier after Game 4. We gotta move on … and come back and win Game 6 on the road. It’s a fun opportunity for us. Hopefully, everything happens for a reason. It should make our team a little harder, more grittier in these situations. Can’t win every series in four and five. They have a great team. We’re excited to go get a huge challenge in St. Louis and try to close out the series.”
Mackinnon also agreed to talk about the unforgettable goal. But his sparse description didn’t do it justice.
“They were changing and were tired, so I got some room and made a move,” he said. “It’s over with. We lost … The playoffs aren’t for points and attention, or whatever. It’s just to get wins. That’s how everyone feels in our room. We’re all tugging on the same rope. It does not matter what kind of goals you score as long as they go in.”
WHAT THE CAPTAIN SAID
This, from Gabriel Landeskog: “Obviously, the first two periods, I thought we played really good, played some really good hockey. We got tied in the third and obviously, they ramped up their desperation level, which you expect. They’re playing for their season. We just didn’t get it done.”
On the process of refocusing after a devastating loss: “It’s the same as if you win a game. You enjoy it for three minutes and then you move on. Here, it’s the same thing. You sulk for three minutes and then you move on. It’s as simple as that.”
TRAVELING
The Avs aren’t scheduled to practice Thursday and will depart for St. Louis in the afternoon.
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 website is www.terryfrei.com and his bio is available at www.terryfrei.com/bio.html
His Colorado Hockey Now column archive can be accessed here