LeBrun: With Avalanche on the ropes, the pressure rises on their championship core

Sports

add

DENVER — There is a display case outside the Colorado Avalanche dressing room with a mini replica Stanley Cup and a large photo of Gabriel Landeskog raising the real thing over his head in June 2022.

I remember leaving the arena in Tampa that night thinking the Avs were just opening their championship window. That like Tampa Bay, Chicago and Pittsburgh before them, we were about to witness multiple Stanley Cup wins by this Avalanche core led by Landeskog, Nathan MacKinnon, Cale Makar, Valeri Nichushkin and Mikko Rantanen.

Then stuff happened. Landeskog didn’t play again for three years, his career nearly ended by a knee injury. Nichushkin started but didn’t finish the next two playoff years for well-documented reasons. The team also dearly missed Nazem Kadri after he left for free agency in the summer of 2022.

Whatever reasoning one wants to attach to it all, there’s this fact: the Avs have won one playoff series since winning the Cup in 2022. Had you told me that would be the case back on championship night in Tampa in 2022, I would have been shocked.

And if the Avs fail to come back and win the next two games against Dallas, there will be some interesting questions to answer about an organization that, on paper, has all the tools to win another Cup. And I mean, they still might.

For starters, this was always going to be the unfair reality of this first-round matchup; either Dallas or Colorado was going home early because the NHL’s ridiculous playoff format pitted two of the league’s top five most talented rosters right out of the gates. This is a conference-final-level matchup being played out way too early, just like when Dallas and Vegas hooked up a year ago in the first round.

But that’s life.

And so in the here and now, the Avs are on the ropes in a series that I believe they privately think they should have led 3-1 after four games. Instead they somehow tied 2-2 and then played their worst game of the series in Dallas in Game 5.

So now they’re feeling it.

“I mean, obviously it has to be desperation,’’ Makar, nominated on back-to-back days for the Norris and Ted Lindsay awards, said Wednesday. “You’ve got one game here, you’ve got to win one at home, and then you see where the chips fall after that. As a team right now, we’ve got a good mindset going into it and we’re focusing only on tomorrow.’’

I asked Avalanche head coach Jared Bednar on Wednesday whether the players remaining from that 2022 championship roster can dip into that experience to find a pathway here, or whether the fact they’ve only won one playoff series since then is part of the story here, too.

“I think you learn from all your experiences, like we haven’t come back in a series in (the) recent past,’’ Bednar pointed out rather interestingly. “So this is a new … this is a challenge for us, right? It’s a really good team. We feel in this series we’ve played some really good hockey.

“We should be a confident group. I like what we’re doing at five-on-five. We got to put all the pieces together for a game, right?’’

The front office has given this team plenty of pieces in what has been the most aggressive re-tool of a roster in-season by any contender in the entire salary cap era. They swapped out their entire goaltending tandem led by the acquisition of Mackenzie Blackwood from San Jose on Dec. 9, then the Rantanen blockbuster with Carolina on Jan. 24 which brought back Martin Necas and Jack Drury, then added blueliner Ryan Lindgren from the Rangers on March 1, and finally the headliner in center Brock Nelson from the Islanders on the eve of the March 7 deadline plus the splashy Charlie Coyle trade on deadline day (and bringing back defenseman Erik Johnson).

It still boggles the mind all that happened after the season started.

“He’s done a great job,’’ Stars GM Jim Nill said of Avs GM Chris MacFarland when we chatted the day after the deadline. “You know, he’s rebuilt that roster in the last four months. That’s not easy to do during the season. My hat goes off to him. I got so much respect for Chris. We got into the manager business around the same time. He’s done a great job in Colorado.’’

It is hard to argue with that sentiment. And yet, if the Avs lose Thursday night at home in Game 6 or Saturday night in Dallas in Game 7, we are going to be left to ponder what to make of what we’ve seen from this team since they won the Cup.

Of note, the Avs never trailed in any of their four series in 2022. Since then, they’ve failed to come back and win after trailing against Seattle in 2023 and couldn’t come back after trailing against Dallas last year. So this is their chance to show their mettle in that scenario. And if they do come back with two wins this week, watch out. It could absolutely be the start of a Stanley Cup spring for the Avs.

For that to happen, they need more from some of their top guys.

MacKinnon has answered the bell in this series; he leads the Avs in scoring with seven points (five goals, two assists). He’s been brilliant. But he needs help. Makar was out of this world in Game 4 but otherwise hasn’t met his own lofty standards (two assists in five games).

Which brings us to Nichushkin. I walked over to him in the Avs’ dressing room Wednesday to ask him a few questions, but he politely declined, saying “next year,” which presumably means he’ll do a media session again next season. He has only done one media session all season, and it was after his first game back from his NHL suspension.

All I wanted to ask him Wednesday was how confident he was in his team’s ability to come back in this series and how he felt he was playing.

Aside from the one highlight-reel goal in Game 3, I don’t think Nichushkin has been very good. That goal is his only point of the series. You’re talking about a guy who arguably was Colorado’s best player in the 2022 Cup final series against the Lightning. He was that dominant.

The Avs need that version, or something close to it, to show up here starting Thursday night.

Valeri Nichushkin only has one point in the series. (Isaiah J. Downing / Imagn Images)

If Colorado loses this series, there’s no question in my mind the Avs will look back to Game 3 and wonder how the heck they lost that night in Landeskog’s emotional return. Ball Arena was rocking like the 2022 Cup final; the energy and electricity in the air were unbelievable. And then Tyler Seguin ended the night in overtime for Dallas.

Like, how could that even happen? If there was ever a tap-in victory, it should come on the night your captain comes back to play his first NHL game in three years, right?

“We’re not thinking about what could have, or should have, or what possibly might have been after Game 3, you got to move on,” Bednar said Wednesday. “We responded for Game 4, now we got to respond for Game 6.’’

Again, what I wonder now with the Avs’ season on the line: Will the remnants of that championship core from 2022 assert themselves, or do we see the team that was eliminated in Game 7 at home to Seattle and in Game 6 at home to Dallas?

“I’m confident in our team, I am,’’ Bednar said. “I think the guys believe in this team. It’s about going out and freeing yourself up to go play instinctual hockey and confident hockey and not getting too wrapped up or too tense that it freezes up your game. …

“I believe that our guys’ head space was good this morning,’’ he added. “You know, it takes a little bit to get over that, we know we weren’t at our best for Game 5. So the pressure’s on. Which is fine. Pressure is a privilege and you earn that pressure. Yeah we’ll see, pressure a lot of times can drive the best of your team. That’s what we’re hopeful for tomorrow night. I think the guys are prepared for that.’’

You know the beauty of the Stanley Cup playoffs? We’ll get our answer starting Thursday night.

(Top photo: Ashley Potts / NHLI via Getty Images)

This news was originally published on this post .

Share on

email

Previous

trending_flat

With one big swing, Anthony Santander sparks Blue Jays’ struggling bats

Sports

Next

trending_flat

What is fandom like for an executive? How David Stearns stays connected to the Knicks

Sports