Slobbered by a big ugly Kraken kiss, the defending Stanley Cup champs had slime on their cheeks and doubt rattling inside their heads.
Hard as it was to believe, the Avs were teetering on the brink of collapse, players pressing every shift with confidence running on empty, in danger of being embarrassed in the first round of the playoffs by an expansion team from Seattle named after a silly sea monster.
“It was all mental,” said Avs coach Jared Bednar, as shocked as every one of the 18,141 fans in Ball Arena that his team had lost its championship mojo.
And then captain Gabriel Landeskog walked in the shaken Colorado dressing room at the first intermission of Game 2 in this best-of-seven series to remind the Avs who they were. Yes, the captain is hurt, unable to skate until next season, reduced to wearing a suit instead of a sweater.
But I swear the Avs wouldn’t have rediscovered their swagger, recovered from a two-goal deficit and beat Seattle 3-2 Thursday without the calm, reassuring voice of the Landy man.
“We were putting pressure on ourselves,” admitted Cale Makar, the best defenseman in the league but not immune to performance anxiety.
Here’s what I sensed from the Avs when they followed a wretched performance in a series-opening loss to Seattle by taking the ice and acting like they had forgotten how to skate, much less raise the Cup.
“We were tight,” Bednar said. “Nobody wanted the puck.”
The proud athletes in the Colorado room crave another championship so badly desire aches in their bones. But in the back of their minds, everyone from superstar center Nathan MacKinnon to rising defenseman Bo Byram know this isn’t the same powerhouse Avalanche team as last year that rolled through the playoffs with a 16-4 record.
In that uncomfortable gap between ambition and reality is where the anxiety festers. The Avs know they can’t fully recreate the magic of 2022, without the fiery competitiveness of Nazem Kadri at the center of everything and the physicality of Landeskog in front of the net. But the truth doesn’t stop Colorado from trying, sometimes too hard for its own benefit.
The Kraken isn’t a bad hockey club; 100 points earned over 82 games in the regular season doesn’t happen by accident. But led by guys who have done it all in the NHL and earned the T-shirt, with professional grinders like Jaden Schwartz and Yanni Gourde, Seattle is feisty, but definitely not spectacular.
If not for Colorado goalie Alexandar Georgiev not only standing on his head, but break-dancing between the pipes, the Kraken could have easily taken an insurmountable four-goal lead after one period, which ended with the home crowd serenading the defending champs with a smattering of boos.
But the truth also is the Kraken just plain weren’t talented enough to bury the Colorado when the visitors had their chance. This reminded us of a universal rule of all sports: The hardest thing for the inferior team to do is close the deal.
When Seattle took an early 2-0 lead after Makar lost a puck battle to Gourde in Colorado’s defensive end and teammate Brandon Tanev ripped a shot past Georgiev for a short-handed goal, Tanev celebrated by blowing a kiss into the crowd.
Stupid is as Seattle does. Don’t blow kisses before the dance is over.
“Landy is not so emotionally invested in it,” said Bednar, lauding an injured veteran’s calming influence on his teammates after a rough opening period. “And they trust him. He’s their captain. And he carries a big voice.”
Slimed by a kiss by a sea beast, the Avs turned around and kicked Kraken tail.
After the boys in burgundy and blue talked it out in the room during the first intermission, they got more physical, they grew aggressive with every shift, they started skating fast instead of thinking slow. Colorado tied the game with goals by Artturi Lehkonen and Valeri Nichushkin within a 48-second span of the second period.
The swagger was back, as well as the sense of inevitability that defenseman Devon Toews would hammer home the a game-winning score that evened the series 1-1 on a beauty of a seeing-eye shot past Seattle goalie Philipp Grubauer with seven minutes and one second remaining in regulation.
“Sometimes you just close your eyes,” said Toews, whose wide eyes and full heart couldn’t miss when the Avs needed him most. “And sometimes you find a spot.”
Once the champs started acting like it, Colorado couldn’t lose.
“We know what we’re capable of doing,” Makar said. “We don’t want to be the team on our heels.”
Sometimes the hardest thing for any of us to do is get out of our own way.
“Relax a little bit,” Toews said.
With their Cup defense teetering on the brink of collapse, Landeskog walked in the room to gently remind the Avs the last thing that should beat the defending champs is self-doubt.
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