Avalanche Room: Positives To Take Forward, Answering Questions About Goaltending

If you thought anyone on the Colorado Avalanche would throw their goaltender under the bus, you will be disappointed with what you’re about to hear and read.

Two Avalanche skaters spoke, and while they were careful with what they said, no one threw their goaltender under the bus. They probably had a reason to, as Alexandar Georgiev simply wasn’t good enough. There’s no other way around it.

But will Jared Bednar change his goaltender on Tuesday? That’s really hard to say, because they simply don’t know if Justus Annunen will be available for them. He was asked, but until he has an answer on Annunen’s health, I’m not sure he even knows.

There are definitely positives to take from this game, as the Avalanche were the better team, at least in my opinion. Andrew Cogliano spoke about that after the game, as well as Cale Makar. Watch their post-game availabilities, and read what Georgiev and Bednar had to say after the game one loss to the Jets.

Avalanche forward Andrew Cogliano

Cogliano on if there are positives they can take forward in a 7 game series:

“For sure. You want the result, but you have to have a vision of the series, and you got to chip away at things and at games and at your gameplan. I thought, for the most part, we did that really well at times.”

Avalanche defenseman Cale Makar

Avalanche goaltender Alexandar Georgiev

HOW DO YOU DESCRIBE WHAT HAPPENED TONIGHT?

“We lost Game One.”

SEEMED LIKE THE FIRST PERIOD WAS PRETTY HECTIC?

“Yeah, it was a lot of emotions. Couple great chances for them, couple great chances for us. It was kind of a high-event game. Being tied up after the first was a pretty good position for us.”

NO ANNUNEN – FIGURED YOU HAD TO PLAY THE WHOLE THING?

“Yeah, just trying to build it up and play my game, no matter what. It was not enough today, unfortunately.”

ANYTHING YOU DIDN’T LIKE ABOUT HOW YOU PLAYED?

“I’ll watch the video to check it out and analyze.”

HOW DO YOU BALANCE THE MOMENTUM SWINGS?

“I’m just trying to focus on the next shot. I think I had a couple good saves when we were down 4-3 in the second. They just managed to score a couple at the right time.”

DID YOU FRUSTRATION MOUNT?

“I feel eventually it is going to come. They scored some really good goals, a couple lucky ones. You have to stay positive and try to find out what happened today and move forward. It’s only 1-0 in the series so I’m looking forward to the next game.”

Avalanche Head Coach Jared Bednar

Question – Six goals against Hellebuyck. How do you balance group’s frustration with the outcome and also learn from this one?

“Well, we played hard. We played extremely hard. We did a lot of good things. You don’t get six (goals) on the Jets without doing that. We also made some mistakes that they capitalized on. Too many, obviously tonight, and it ends up costing us the hockey game. I think there’s lots to look at that is on the positive side. We’ll have to better in a couple areas of the game, but I don’t think there’s a need for frustration at all after that. Shouldn’t be frustrated at all. I think we played hard, we played well in a lot of areas. We have to clean up a couple things but, hey, this is gonna be the long, hard series and frustration shouldn’t be creeping into it after losing one game on the road.”

Question – Your thoughts on Georgiev’s performance tonight?

“It probably needed to be better, right? Like I thought we played well, we created some chances. He made some good saves, but we’re gonna need a couple more saves than that probably to win, you know. But it is what it is. We’ll regroup. We made some mistakes in front of him that we’ll have to clean up and try to get the job done. It’s a team game.”

Question – The overall attitude in the locker room was similar to what you were saying. The mistakes that were made, can you take a positive out of the fact that the same mistakes weren’t made over and over?

“Listen, you’ve got to win battles. You’ve got to win races. You’ve got to be highly competitive. You’ve got to do the right things structurally, which we did. You look at the goals, like just quickly Goal 1 — good coverage, shot has eyes, makes it all the way through to the net and goes in. Goal 2, we turn it over, right? We can’t throw it into the middle of the ice. They make a nice play and get a stick on it but the safer play is probably around the boards on that one. Goal 3 is a hard forecheck we’re in good coverage, we lose the [?] net front they bang it in. It’s not from lack of effort, lack of positioning, mental erros, the turnover would be a mental error but they capitalized on those chances. So we have to give them less. So it’s that simple.

Question About Lack of Panic in the Dressing Room

“It’s about belief and it’s about not giving up on what you’ve worked so hard for. That’s the reality. If you’re going to work for something and put everything you’ve got into it for eight months and you have belief in your team that you can come back in any situation, then you keep playing as hard as you possibly can and keep pushing for that to happen. And sometimes that happens, tonight it didn’t. It’s just being strong mentally. Being resiliant and believing in what you’re doing. Regardless of success or failure, our message is you go put your best foot forward and play every shift like it’s your last. It’s the best time of the year to be playing hockey in the Stanley Cup playoffs in the best league in the world. You’ve got to embrace it and you;ve got to put everything you have into it to win.”

Question – Do you feel like your team gets tense or has issues, or just starts to play a different way because maybe they’re worried about the mistakes going in the back of the net?

A: Well, I thought our start was great tonight. And I know that we got a lead and it’s gone. I just felt like we were pretty steady in our approach tonight. You get the feeling on the bench, is frustration setting in? Do you believe in what you’re doing? I think we proved a lot to ourselves in the locker room. We haven’t played the Jets well this year. We played a good game early in the season, but that’s our first taste of us playing hard and them playing hard and seeing what’s going to happen. And it’s a 7 game series. I don’t think a whole lot changed for us from start to finish. I thought our guys played as hard as they possibly could and as clean as they possibly could.

Question – Do you expect Annunen to be healthy enough to play the next game?

Yeah, I don’t know. I dont know if he’s going to be healthy enough to play or not. He wasn’t healthy enough to play tonight, we’ll see what we see in the morning.

Question – Would you consider a goaltending change?

I’m not going to speculate.