Avalanche Room: ‘We Did Some Dumb Stuff Today’; Coach Defends Georgiev

The Minnesota game wasn’t too bad for the Colorado Avalanche, despite giving up 46 shots. Most of them came from the outside, and Jared Bednar wasn’t unhappy with it. Edmonton was rough, but that’s a game you can bounce back from.

Or not.

Through two periods, the Avalanche surrendered 32 scoring chances in 33 minutes of 5-on-5 time. The chances they gave up were high-quality, and while the Stars are a very good team, a lot of it had to with how the Avalanche played. Their coach was very critical of their defensive play after the game, but did defend one person – Alexandar Georgiev.

Here’s some short availabilities from Cale Makar and Zach Parise, and what coach Bednar had to say after the Avalanche fell 7-4 to the Stars.

Cale Makar

Zach Parise

Bednar on Georgiev and his Avalanche:

“I thought (Georgiev) was great tonight. You can’t fault him on any of the goals. I think the one he’d probably like back is the one that squeaked through him the quick slip the middle on the powerplay, but he was good. The defending breakdowns that we had, we did some dumb stuff today. And they all led to really good scoring chances against. We got beat off the walls a few times, created some more scoring chances against. It looked like for a while at the game we were leaving early without the puck, and they played underneath us, checked the puck back, and got some good scoring chances too. All in all, I thought he had a good night. We just weren’t good enough defensively.”

Bednar on the last few games:

“I liked our game against Minny actually…but I don’t love the way we’re checking right now. I think it’s certainly curable though.”

Bednar on if these issues are easily fixable:

“Oh yeah. Some of them are for sure. And then some of it, we got beat off the walls. We were competitive, don’t get me wrong, it felt like we were more competitive on the offensive side of things than we were on the defensive side of things. It can’t be that way.”

Bednar on the game itself:

“It’s a huge game, right? It’s for us to stay in the division race and then to grab it, and basically have it. That’s a different animal than some of the teams we’ve been playing. So is Edmonton. Dallas is tied for second overall in the league and they’re a wagon. They’re deep, they’ll come at you with four lines with offensive ability. They’re a really good team. They’re a deep team and they check the right way, and check hard.”

Bednar on the non-icing with Makar and Duchene in the third:

“Yeah, I do (have an issue with the non-call). I mean, he’s first at the top of the circles, he’s first at the hashmarks. I’d like to see him finish it, but, it’s not supposed to be a race to the goal line.”