Ten seconds changed everything, transforming the Avalanche from just another fancy skate team with championship dreams into something much more dangerous. Nathan MacKinnon and his Colorado teammates came down and dirty, committed to the heavy lifting needed to lift the Stanley Cup.
“Sometimes it’s not nice,” veteran defender Erik Johnson said Wednesday.
The Avs won their NHL playoff opener 3-0, but had to sweat every detail and fight for every inch of ice in as difficult a victory as a three-goal game can be.
Playing deep into the third period through a goalie harder than August in the Arizona desert, players on the Colorado bench were able to surrender to frustration, hold on to their sticks and get undone. Instead of the power of two scores 10 seconds apart by Nazem Kadri and JT Compher, Colorado Coyotes networker Darcy Kuemper struck like … well … an Avalanche.
On an afternoon when MacKinnon could not run out as much as one shot on goal against Arizona, this victory often meant more, precisely because the Avs won without playing MacK as the best skater on Earth.
In this funny-not-so-nice test of testing, it seems to be almost perfect when the breakthrough scores were scored by Kadri and Compher, two of the toughest grinders you will ever meet.
“The best part about this team is that our competition levels are through the roof. We have a lot of skills, but we support that with our work ethic, ‘said Kadri. ‘I know JT is the same way (like me). We are not sorry to get into those dirty areas and try to score goals. ”
This is not to suggest that the Avalanche grew up in the 10 seconds between the scores by Kadri and Compher. This team has been slowly and patiently built by general manager Joe Sakic to face tough playoff challenges. But in those 10 seconds, it became clear that the Avs knew their time was right now and there was no reason they could not win it all.
Kadri showed that much soaring is required to pick a puck past Kuemper at 13 minutes, five seconds into the final period. His count broke the aura of an inaccessibility of a goalkeeper as impenetrable as anyone in the league at this moment, when Compher Kuemper struck to comfortably put Colorado ahead 2-0, just 10 seconds later.
For good measure, Mikko Rantanen reminds the Coyotes where the majority of the skill in this series resides, by falling to one knee to take a beautiful pass from MacKinnon and an exceptional scoring score at 14:28 from the third period to add.
“It was probably an easy game for us to get frustrated,” Johnson said.
How many times have we seen it happen? NHL teams that fly high in the playoffs split in the first round because all those hard-earned accolades in the regular season didn’t mean the ice shaved off the first hard check in a best-of- Seven-series against a feisty underdog. These Coyotes do not give a damn about Colorado’s reputation as a Stanley Cup favorite.
For more than two periods and 30 shots, the Avalanche could not get a puck past Kuemper. The high temperature in Phoenix on this summer day was 109 degrees. That’s sizzling, but not as impossible to tackle as Kuemper proved to be. And for most of this game at the NHL bubble in Edmonton, the ‘Yotes have put MacKinnon in a closet, leaving him little room to breathe, much less blended.
The biggest question mark over this Avalanche team is not the ability to defeat all possible enemies from Boston to Vegas, but if Colorado has the decency not to defeat itself as playoff pressure builds independently. Why should we think that this young group can withstand the tension?
‘The belief that our boys have in the wardrobe. They believe in each other, ”said Avs coach Jared Bednar. ‘They know the way we want to play and have to play every night to be successful. They also know that the playoffs will not be easy at every opportunity. “
For those of us old enough to remember the last time the Avs won the trophy, it’s impossible to forget the battle cry of Patrick Roy, Ray Bourque and the boys in burgundy and blue: Mission 16W. Every step to a championship and every win can be harder than anything even future Hall-of-Fame players have ever done in hockey.
This series against Arizona is far from over, as there is every reason to believe that Kuemper will continue to look as big as a boulder wedge between the pipes. But often the Coyotes Colorado made an enormous favorite in its airy quest, reminding the Avs of the leap that no team has won the Cup alone with fancy skates and 14-carat nobles of a goal. Championships are a grim, sweaty gravel.
“We will expect it,” said Bednar, “to become harder.”
Is not that the hard truth?
