PATIENCE PAYS OFF IN VICTORY FOR AVALANCHE
It took more than 50 minutes to get on score sheet but Colorado beats Arizona
It’s the hockey equivalent of “parking the bus” in soccer.
The Arizona Coyotes were content to keep as many players behind the puck as possible against the Colorado Avalanche in Game 1 of their Stanley Cup playoffs first-round series at Rogers Place on Wednesday, suck the life out of the game and attempt to steal a goal at the other end.
The strategy nearly paid off as it took Colorado more than 53 minutes to break the deadlock, but once they did, they cruised to a 3-0 victory, outshooting Arizona 40-14 in the process.
“It’s nothing that we didn’t expect to be coming our way,” said Avalanche head coach
Jared Bednar. “Arizona is a real tight-checking team, they’re always above pucks, they make you work for every inch of ice you can get, and it’s not easy to get to the net on them.
“When you do make enough plays and do enough good things to get a good scoring chance, you know you run into a good goalie in (Darcy) Kuemper.”
Nazem Kadri, J.T. Compher and Mikko Rantanen scored for the Avalanche in the win to take a 1-0 series lead. Game 2 is on Friday (noon) at Rogers Place.
Philipp Grubauer made 14 saves for likely the easiest shutout of his career.
“I thought our group did a great job of sticking with it,” Compher said. “We kept with the game plan, kept the pressure on them; we were smart at the (blue) lines, made them work for everything they got and it worked out for us.”
Arizona got to the playoffs by deploying a similar strategy against the Nashville Predators in their best-of-five qualifying series, leaning heavily on Kuemper and scoring timely goals. Arizona won the series 3-1, getting outshot in every game.
Against the Avalanche, who finished as the second seed after the top 4 round robin, Kuemper made 13 first-period saves while at the other end Grubauer saw just three shots, although he did have one ring off the goalpost behind him.
“This is a Colorado team that is a powerhouse team and you have to be able to have details in your game, but you can’t back up, you have to go; you have to make a play,” said Coyotes head coach Rick Tocchet. “You have to make a pass, you have to win a battle. The scary thing is that in a 0-0 game with eight minutes to go, we get a power play we could squeak that out, but we didn’t have the fortitude to do it.”
Despite the territorial advantage, the Avalanche weren’t getting much on the inside as the Coyotes did a good job of clearing the shooting lanes and keeping the front of their net clear.
In the second, traffic kept flowing in one direction as the Avalanche outshot the Coyotes 15-3, but again, didn’t have many clear-cut opportunities.
“We were talking about being patient in the intermission,” Rantanen said. “We were getting a lot of chances, we just couldn’t find the back of the net, but we knew it was coming. We could see the shots on the board and we just stuck with it and that’s what we do as a team.”
With 7 1/2 minutes left in the third, the Avalanche got an opportunity on the power play as Derek Stepan was assessed an interference penalty in front of his own net with the puck in the corner.
Arizona was unhappy with the call, which proved decisive.
“I think those guys have a really difficult job, I like Dan (O’rourke), I think he’s a good veteran ref,” Stepan said. “This is the Stanley Cup playoffs, the puck gets dumped in the corner, I don’t see much danger there to make a call like that in the third period.”
Kadri scored on a scramble in front less than a minutes into the power play, finding a rebound and slipping it underneath a sprawled Kuemper. Just 10 seconds later Compher added a second, getting to the puck on another scramble in front and sliding it past Kuemper.
Just over a minute after that, Rantanen scored to put the game away, going down on one knee to convert a cross-crease pass from Nathan Mackinnon.
“This is was just a momentum builder for us,” Kadri said. “We’ve seen in the playoffs teams dominate and the opposition still be in the game and able to scrape out a win. It was just a matter of time and their goaltender played great and gave them an opportunity to win. But that being said, we stayed relentless, stayed on the puck and we knew it was going to come sooner or later.”
We were getting a lot of chances, we just couldn’t find the back of the net, but we knew it was coming.