Avalanche Locker Room: MacKinnon on Lack of Execution, Bednar Talks Breaking up Star Forwards

After their game one loss to the Kraken, Colorado Avalanche players and their head coach made one thing clear: the execution just wasn’t good enough.

After the game, MacKinnon talked about the lack of execution and how he felt the game went. Alexandar Georgiev discussed his first career playoff start, and what exactly happened on that second Kraken goal. And Jared Bednar discussed the possibility of breaking up his star forwards.

Check out the video below from Georgiev and MacKinnon, and read what Bednar had to say after the game.

Bednar on the game overall:

Well, I didn’t like our execution. That was probably the first thing that stood out to me. In a lot of areas of the ice, not just on our attack. If you look at the goals, we gave them one, well two on d-zone breakouts, turnovers that were gifts. Granted, they’re coming hard, but we didn’t handle their pressure on those two occasions, and other occasions. We’ve got to do a better job getting in and out of our zone with the puck, number one. And then, I felt like, at times, they had a relatively easy time getting out of their zone, so the forecheck part of it has to get more aggressive. But then we did do some good things on the forecheck and in o-zone play to open up some plays that were there to be made, we didn’t execute very good. We passed the puck out of the zone a couple of times when we had extended time. Missed passes, bouncing pucks, I thought just looked sloppy from our group, a little bit. I liked some of the intensity we played with at times, but I would say they won more than their fair share of races to pucks, and probably won more than their fair share of battles for pucks too.

Avalanche coach Bednar on potentially breaking up his stars:

Yes, for sure (he’ll consider breaking them up). I look at the production, scoring chance opportunities, mainly. These will be the first things I look at. What we’re creating with Nate and Mikko together. Is their line dominant? And then, how’s the second line doing? Both of the top two lines especially have to be productive lines for us, right? They have to both be doing the job defensively and both be doing the job offensively. So I look at basically chances for and against, opportunities for and against, zone-time for and against. And if I don’t like it, then we’ll likely change it.

Bednar on his Avalanche defense:

Not good enough. Our whole team just wasn’t quite good enough. Again, I thought we did some good things, they obviously did more good things. Jack, left the game with a lower-body injury. And I thought Manson was rusty. He was rusty today. Coming back in, missed time and it showed in a couple of areas. The d-core as a whole, similar to the rest of our team.

Bednar on the sense his team won’t panic after one loss: 

Should be, I’d agree with that. I think it’s an important game, game one at home, you want to win it, you want to put your best foot forward so you can sort of start the mental game of breaking another team down. We didn’t do that tonight. I don’t expect our team to break down after something like that, either. We’ve seen it now, we’ll take a look at it again, and we’ll make some adjustments if need be, and we’ve got to go and we have to be better than we were tonight. I think we have to expect, when you’re playing all teams that have 100-plus points, and it’s a tough division, you’ve seen through all the other games in the division and through the league, that you have to expect to play your best hockey if you want to win. And we weren’t at our best tonight. That wasn’t our best game, wasn’t even close, and if we want to win, we’ll have to be much better for game two.

Bednar on Avalanche goaltender Alexandar Georgiev:

Yeah, I thought he was good. Again, we have the turnover, slot, makes a big save and rebound goes right back on his tape. He’s got no chance on that. Second goal, again, I’m looking at the breakdown before that. It’s relatively easy coverage. It’s neutral zone forecheck with a guy pushing and a guy stepping and we let one guy get behind us. One guy’s not doing his job there. It ends up on a 3-on-2, and we’re also mid-change with our ‘D’, which gave them a little bit more time than I would have liked. Could he have come up with it? We’ve seen him come up with it before, but I mean, I thought he had a good game. Three get by him, and they were all earned on their side of it.