Goalie Francouz pitches shutout
The chants began during pregame introductions as Avalanche goalie Pavel Francouz lined up next to his teammates for the national anthems.
“Frankie! Frankie! Frankie!”
It continued after his first save, which he handled with the comfort level of a goalie that had started every game this playoff season, not one starting for the first time since May 9.
“Frankie! Frankie! Frankie!”
And it was heard for the last time Thursday night with 12.7 seconds remaining as the Avalanche closed out a 4-0 win over the Edmonton Oilers in Game 2 of the Western Conference Final.
“Frankie! Frankie! Frankie!”
Finally, after facing and stopping 24 Oilers shots, Francouz took a moment to raise his hand in acknowledgment. All of the adulation for Francouz, who turns 32 on Friday, was deserved.
“He was great,” Avs winger Mikko Rantanen said. “It’s not easy to not play a lot and jump in like that and make some key saves when the game was 0-0 and even when we had a (multi-goal) lead. It shows how mentally strong he is.”
Francouz replaced Darcy Kuemper (upper-body injury) in the second period of Tuesday’s Game 1 and was told Wednesday afternoon he would get the Game 2 start.
“I was kind of thinking I was going to play already after (Tuesday),” Francouz said. “For sure, you’re a little nervous and have it in the back of your mind that it’s a really important game, but what helped me was the way our team
played tonight since the first seconds and I knew they would help me a lot. That made me more calm and I could just focus on my job.”
Francouz was 15-5-1 in the regular season and is now 4-0 in the playoffs; he won Games 3-4 of the Nashville series when Kuemper was out with an eye injury.
“Obviously, (Francouz) knows the magnitude of it coming into a playoff series like this,” Avs coach Jared Bednar said. “He made most of the saves look easy.”
The entire Avalanche defensive plan and performance merited a stick salute. Against an Edmonton team averaging 4.5 goals and 35.1 shots per game in the playoffs, the
Avalanche’s defensive game tightened up. Thirteen of the Oilers’ shots came in the first period. Trailing 3-0 to start the third period, Edmonton had only three shots in the first 10 minutes.
“A bit cleaner play,” Avs defenseman Josh Manson said. “Frankie played well and he shut the door well when he needed to do so and we tightened up defensively.”
The Avalanche blew a 3-0 lead in an eventual overtime loss to St. Louis in the second round (Game 5) and nearly squandered a 7-3 lead against Edmonton on Tuesday.
But on this night the high-flying Oilers were unable to get out of the blocks once the Avalanche built a 3-0 lead in the second period. In the third, instead of trying to build on the lead and win 5-0 or 6-0, the Avs were content to buckle down and not give the Oilers any hope.
The defensemen, for the most part, stayed home instead of taking over aggressive chances. The passing was crisp in the Oilers’ zone as the forwards sent the puck toward the Edmonton goal-line and not back to the point.
When the Oilers did get a look on goal, Francouz’s view was clean and his rebound control top-notch.
“He was great,” Bednar said. “He looked poise, calm, really confident.”