Adrian Dater
I, like a lot of you probably, keep coming back to Darcy Kuemper as to whether this Avalanche team really will hoist the Stanley Cup soon, or whether this will all be another collapse – the Round 4 Version.
I’m sure Jared Bednar will go back to Kuemper to start Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Final. He got pulled early tonight in a once-promising-soon-to-turn-disastrous Game 3 at Amalie Arena. Kuemper will have had the proper time to reflect on a poor showing in Game 3, say all the right things in the 48 hours leading up to Game 4 and come out ready with Avs pom-poms cheering him on.
But, Kuemper remains the one key trick-or-treat player on an Avalanche team that otherwise has been sure and steady almost all season.
Starting with an Anthony Cirelli goal in which Kuemper had plenty of time to poke-check away well before the shot, Kuemper just looked flat-out too slow to react to anything in this one. The Avs scored the first two goals of the game (but one was disallowed because Bo Byram barely brought the puck inside his own zone before making a two-line pass) and seemed to have the Lightning and its tanned crowd on edge.
But, starting with the bad Cirelli goal, then an Ondrej Palat goal not long after, the Avs just fell behind for good.
Valeri Nichushkin’s goal would have made it 1-0 early, but video review did show Byram was offside when he made a long stretch pass. The Avs still took a 1-0 lead on the first of two Gabe Landeskog goals, but everything was pretty all Lightning after that.
Pavel Francouz relieved Kuemper, but the Avalanche were dead by then. Kuemper’s save percentage in the playoffs is back under the Mendoza line of .900 (.892). For a team that’s gone this far, that’s a pretty remarkable stat.
“I didn’t think he had a good night,” Jared Bednar told everyone after the game.
Hmm, maybe Kuemper isn’t such a lock to start Game 4 after all.
Game 4 is Wednesday night at Amalie. For those who thought this series might be over already:
Nope.
It wasn’t all Kuemper’s fault, of course. Devon Toews and Cale Makar had an uncharacteristically bad defensive night together, going a combined minus-6 through the first two periods. Nikita Kucherov getting between both of them to one side of the ice for the second goal of the game, on his assist to Ondrej Palat, was one such breakdown. The second line, without Nazem Kadri and Andre Burakovsky, were non-existent.
You can’t win ’em all. But the Avs can’t lose three more.