On short notice, Avs ready for Stars in second round
The next round comes surprisingly quickly for the Avalanche, but the team is just fine with that.
The Avs will open their Western Conference semifinal series against the Dallas Stars on Saturday (6 p.m., NBC). It will be the NHL’s only game of the day, and it comes a day before two possible first-round Game 7s.
The second round was originally scheduled to begin no sooner than Tuesday.
“I like starting as soon as possible, to be honest with you,” Colorado coach Jared Bednar said from the team hotel in Edmonton. “I think time generally seems to move pretty slowly here in the bubble, which we found out for the first couple weeks when we were playing every third day and had some time before our first game. And then once we kind of got into the series with Arizona, time seemed to go a little quicker. No travel. The convenience of getting to the rink. It’s just like game day is great.
“Obviously there’s a focus there on what you need to do, and then the days in between games, there’s plenty of time to get some rest and get prepared to play the next night. We’re liking the fact we don’t have too much time off in between games. I’m sure Dallas is kind of the same way. Just keep playing. It’s what we’re all here to do, is play hockey games and not necessarily practice and have days off.”
Dallas is coming off its wild Game 6 comeback over the Calgary Flames, who blew a 3-0 lead and fell in six games. The Stars went to Edmonton’s football stadium for off-ice training Friday.
No. 2-seeded Colorado defeated the No. 3 Stars 4-0 on Aug. 5 in round-robin play at Rogers Place.
“We’re picking through video now of some of their recent games,” Bednar said of the Stars. “Obviously this is a team we know pretty well from playing them in the regular season, and them or us, we’re not changing a whole lot from when we were playing regular season, even though now it’s playoff time. It looked like they had a little bit of a slow start coming into the bubble, but it certainly looks like now, here recently,
I’ve watched some of their last couple games, that they’re firing on all cylinders again.”
Dallas went 4-0 over Colorado in the regular season, winning twice beyond regulation. But the Stars had lost eight straight games until they upset St. Louis in the final round-robin Aug. 8 in Edmonton.
They took a six-game losing streak into the NHL pause on March 12.
“They’ve gotten better as this qualifier and playoff has gone on,” Avs defenseman Erik Johnson said. “They battled back against Calgary. They got some timely goals, and they’re a veteran team.
Some really good defensemen who log a lot of minutes and do a lot of heavy lifting for them. Some guys up front that can put the puck in the net. So it’s going to be probably a heavier series, probably some more physicality than what we had in the last one, so we’re looking forward to it.”