AVALANCHE BEATS THE BLUES TO GET SPOT IN PLAYOFFS
Terrible last season, Colorado caps terrific turnaround with postseason berth
Colorado defeats St. Louis 5-2 to earn the club its first postseason appearance in four years. The Avalanche will face top-seeded Nashville in a bestof-seven series.
Playoffs? Fantasy met reality Saturday night. A year after finishing as the laughingstock of the NHL with a club record-low 48 points, the Avalanche completed the improbable before some 18,000 adoring fans at the Pepsi Center.
Amid a wild Game 7-type atmosphere in the most unique NHL regular-season setting of its kind since 2010, the Avs defeated the St. Louis Blues 5-2 in Game 82 for the teams. Colorado finished with 95 points — just a point shy of doubling its total from a year ago — and leapfrogged the Blues for the last Western Conference wild-card playoff berth.
St. Louis’ postseason run ended at six years.
The Avs, who will participate in the playoffs for the first time in four years and for just the third time in the last 10, will open a best-of-seven series against No. 1-seeded Nashville on Wednesday or Thursday at Bridgestone Arena in Music City.
The Blues, who lost top goal scorer Vladimir Tarasenko to injury midway through the first period, will miss the playoffs for the first time since 2011.
The Avs’ best forwards and two undersized defensemen led the charge
Saturday. Blueliners Sam Girard and Tyson Barrie (power play) scored with long shots from the point and the MGM Line of center Nathan Mackinnon, left wing Gabe Landeskog and right wing Mikko Rantanen was fantastic.
Mackinnon scored the third goal to snap a nine-game goals drought and Landeskog had two assists before scoring an emptynet goal with 3:23 remaining to ice the game at 4-1. Rantanen set up Barrie’s goal.
Both teams added goals in the final minute.
Colorado goalie Jonathan Bernier also had an excellent game with 32 saves.
Only five Avs played in the club’s previous playoff series in 2014, when Colorado lost Game 7 in the first round to Minnesota. Mackinnon, Landeskog and Barrie were youngsters on that team, along with defenseman Erik Johnson and goalie Semyon Varlamov, who both are out with injuries.
The Avs led 2-0 and 3-1 on Saturday. Girard and Barrie scored before the Blues got on the board with Jaden Schwartz’s tip of Alex Pietrangelo’s long blast at 12:28 of the second period.
Barrie and Schwartz traded power-play goals at 6:11 and 12:28, respectively, before Mackinnon scored his first goal in 10 games to extend Colorado’s lead to 3-1 at 16:58.
The Blues and Avs were playing in a winner-take-all, regular-season finale for both teams for the first time since 2010 when Philadelphia defeated the New York Rangers in a 2-1 shootout to decide the final Eastern Conference playoff berth that season. The Flyers went on to win the conference title and play Pittsburgh in the Stanley Cup Final.