Avs coach Jared Bednar is no Vic Fangio, and thank goodness. But the Avalanche has goaltender issues much like the Broncos had quarterback issues last summer.
Darcy Kuemper or Pavel Francouz?
Drew Lock or Teddy Bridgewater?
Does it matter?
Pick a side, Front Range. Because there’s a chance that neither guy gets you where you ultimately want to go. And that’s to a Stanley Cup victory parade.
“You’ve seen throughout the playoffs how many teams are on to their second goalie and some teams, their third,” Avs coach Jared Bednar said after his team survived a wild, 8-6 win in Game 1 Tuesday of the Western Conference Finals. “And (they’re) trying to survive (with) not having capable goaltending from more than one guy. And we have it.”
Capable? Yes. Stanley Cup worthy? Not if Tuesday night’s series opener was any harbinger of what’s to come.
To be fair, if you’re the Avs, playing Edmonton is like playing some evil, alternative-universe, Alberta version of themselves. The Oilers have star power in Connor McDavid, Leon Draisatil and Evander Kane, speed and savvy through four lines, and enough electricity on offense to power 15 city blocks.
Bednar’s roster is like the Pacific Ocean — it comes at you in relentless, crashing waves. The Avs went into the third round of the postseason with 16 different playoff scorers and eight skaters netting two goals or more. The Oilers, coming into Tuesday, had produced 14 and nine, respectively.
Kuemper left Game 1 with an upper body injury, a 6-3 lead, and more questions from a fan base that saw two or three too many soft goals allowed against the Blues in the second round. Francouz came off the bench and got thrown to the wolves against one of the hottest offenses on ice, stopping 18 of the 21 shots he faced, including some big ones in the final two minutes as the desperate Oilers battered him with a man advantage.
“(Francouz) was great. That’s hard,” Avs star Nathan MacKinnon said of his backup netminder. “Playing the two best players in the world, peppering you as soon as you come in — it was real impressive by Frankie.”
Impressive, yes, given the context. It wasn’t necessarily definitive, either.
And when a reporter asked Bednar for an update on Kuemper’s condition for Game 2 on Thursday night, the coach only offered a terse “Yeah, we’ll see.”
Only a sadist would envy Bednar’s options, pending Mount Darcy’s health. Try Josh Manson in goal? Coax Patrick Roy and his 56-year-old legs out of retirement?
“No, definitely not the way,” Avalanche defenseman Cale Makar, who was great Tuesday, said of his team’s overall play.
Amen. Giving up six goals in your first Western Conference appearance in 20 years is a little hard on the eyes. To say nothing for the heart.
“We know safe,” Bednar said, “is death.”
But why is a three-goal lead, at home, so blasted slippery?
That wasn’t hockey. It was whiplash with commercial breaks.
It was every no-holds-barred video game tournament in your dorm room, the ones you still laugh about decades later, played out in real life between the two fastest hockey teams in North America.
(After Cale Makar’s wonder goal that ended the first period, that’s not an unfair question. Sometimes, you have to make your own luck. Or the replay gurus in Toronto decide to make it for you.)
At 7-3, you were making football score jokes. At 7-4 by the end of the second period, you exhaled and hoped for the best. At 7-5, after a flukey goal by Edmonton’s Derek Ryan early in the third stanza, you held your breath.
After a regrettable Gabe Landeskog holding call for wrapping up McDavid brought an Edmonton power play and a goal from Ryan Nugent-Hopkins that made it 7-6, you held your rosary beads. For dear life.
“I think we have a lot to clean up, defensively,” Avs forward J.T. Compher said. “If we want to win more games in this series, we have a bit to clean up.”
Kuemper or Francouz?
Lock or Bridgewater?
Does it matter?
If a coach says he’s got two quarterbacks, it means he doesn’t have any. When Bednar says he’s got two goalies, on this stage, it means the same darned thing.
