Nathan MacKinnon saw a team that couldn’t come up the rink with their usual speed. That she couldn’t generate quality scoring chances and she couldn’t establish her rhythm.
Posted at 6:08 p.m.
It was unusual.
“We were bad,” the Colorado Avalanche forward admitted after a 4-1 loss to the St. Louis Blues to tie the series 1-1. It was very bad. »
The Blues did all the right things – from making changes to the lines to create more offense to shutting down the center to frustrate the Avalanche’s fast skaters.
Now it’s the Avalanche’s turn to play that high-pressure game of chess as the series travels to St. Louis for Game 3 on Saturday.
Nothing is left for cons for the best team in the Western Conference. This includes line changes or player movements.
“You won’t win the playoffs if you don’t offer your best hockey,” Avalanche head coach Jared Bednar said Friday. We weren’t even close to our best hockey last night and that’s our fault. Our best hockey is yet to be determined. We are always looking for a perfect match. »
First on the agenda: finding a way to create more maneuvering room for MacKinnon and defender Cale Makar. The Blues made it extremely difficult for them in the neutral zone in Game 2. Makar hasn’t scored a single point in the series, after registering three goals and seven assists against the Nashville Predators in the first round.
There’s also the curious case of Mikko Rantanen, who led the team in points this season but hasn’t scored since the start of the playoffs (despite having seven assists).
“Do you think Mikko is playing the best hockey you’ve seen from him? We need him to be an impact player,” Bednar insisted.
The Avalanche could potentially stir things up and insert forwards like Alex Newhook and Logan O’Connor.
She could also have MacKinnon, Rantanen and Gabriel Landeskog on the top line, but Bednar said he was pleased with Landeskog’s performance alongside Nazem Kadri and Artturi Lehkonen. As for the atmosphere within the team, the head coach declared that “the guys had high morale”.
“They understand it’s mostly about us,” he added.
However, there is still this doubt hanging over the Avalanche’s heads. She’s lost in the second round of the playoffs for the past three years. Last year, it led 2-0 against the Vegas Golden Knights before losing the next four games.
Blues goaltender Jordan Binnington shone against the Colorado squad. After stopping 51 shots in a Game 1 overtime loss, Binnington stopped 30 pucks on Thursday.
“He made the saves when he needed to,” Blues head coach Craig Berube said.
The Avalanche’s mission is to make sure he can’t spot the puck as well as he did in the first two games of the series.
“The goaltenders are so good now that if they see everything, they’ll stop the pucks,” Bednar said. Veiling a goalkeeper’s view, even if it’s a moving screen, is extremely important. We have to hide from him. »
It has a lot to do with the Blues not allowing Avalanche players to skate as they please on the ice. The Blues have achieved what many have not been able to accomplish, which is to slow them down.
They would certainly not be disappointed to repeat this performance at home.
For the Avalanche, winning on the road starts with quickly silencing the crowd. They won both games in Nashville by scoring first.
“We have to go abroad and steal a game. We hope to fly two, expressed MacKinnon. We have to forget the second game, move on and get back to our way of playing. »