What is it about the Stanley Cup Playoffs that turns Peter DeBoer into Robert Oppenheimer and Jared Bednar into Opie Taylor?
“The margin between winning and losing is so slight,” Avalanche defenseman Devon Toews reflected late Saturday night after Colorado fell in frustrating fashion, 4-1, in Game 3 of its second-round series with the Dallas Stars. “(and) when you get to the playoffs, it’s slimmer.”
So are the windows. And the space. And the nooks and crannies where Stars goalie Jake Oettinger isn’t resting one of his eight arms.
DeBoer, the Dallas coach who eliminated the Avs from the 2021 postseason with Vegas and in 2019 with San Jose, plays a deliberate, smothering style on the road that makes watching paint dry look like “The Roast of Tom Brady.”
But mamma mia, it works. This is a chess game now, and Bednar’s next counter could well decide this series.
Me? I’d dump the puck away from wherever Stars defenseman Miro Heiskanen isn’t circling like a tiger shark. I’d keep Nathan MacKinnon, Val Nichushkin and Mikko Rantanen on the same line. I’d give Oppenheimer and his eggheads on the Dallas bench something to think about before this series blows up in somebody’s face.
“I thought we worked hard the whole night,” said Bednar, who’ll look to even the best-of-seven series Monday night in Game 4 at Ball Arena. “I didn’t sense any frustration. We were competitive. We were skating. I think the third period, our execution wasn’t great. Part of that was probably (being) a little bit stubborn with some plays instead of working in the red and putting it in behind (Oettinger) and trying to get forecheck going.”
Give Dallas a lead late, and the Stars become a royal pain in the tuchus. Team DeBoer works the ice away from home in ways only a mother could love. Forecheck like crazy. Contest entries into the zone. Muck it up.
“We had some really good looks,” Toews said. “You know, 4-on-2s, 3-on-2s with space and time to set something up. And we kind of just jammed ourselves.”
The Avs are faster. The Stars look smarter. In Bednar’s Game 1s against DeBoer in the playoffs, head-to-head, he’s 2-1. His teams have outscored Uncle Pete’s crews by an average margin of 4.3-3.0 per game.
It’s what comes after that gives you the shakes. In postseason matchups following the opener, Bednar’s teams are 4-9. They’re 3-5 in tussles with a one-goal difference. They’re 3-3 at home.
The Avs against DeBoer from Game 2 forward are still giving up a decent 3.2 goals per tilt. But the scoring goes off a cliff after that — from 4.3 in Game 1s to 2.46, on average, the rest of the way.
All of which made Saturday’s Game 3 feel as frustrating as it was familiar. The phantoms of playoffs past grabbed some popcorn, took a seat behind the home bench, and whispered cool, cruel nothings in Bednar’s ear.
The Avs outshot the Stars, 29-23. They outhit Dallas, 38-21. They managed three power-play opportunities to the visitors’ none.
But the Devil was in the details here, and they were soul-crushing. Passes dribbled off stick after stick. Zone entries were labored. Windows tightened. Everything offensively felt a centimeter or two out of sync. Dallas blocked 24 shots while the Avs turned it over 12 times. As with Game 2, some of those wounds felt self-inflicted.
“I don’t think a coach has ever seen a perfect game, but that’s as close to a perfect road game as you can play in my mind coming into this situation,” DeBoer said later. “We knew (the Avs) were going to come out guns-a-blazing in the first period. You knew their home record. You knew they had challenged their best players, (that) their coach did after last game.
“So we knew we were going to get a lot thrown at us early in that game. Our composure throughout the night was outstanding.’’
The Avs’ composure felt solid, but the odd brain cramp had a nasty habit of landing in the back of their own net. Alexandar Georgiev — 19 saves, and some flashy ones late — was pretty good between the pipes for the hosts in Game 3. The problem? Otter was a wall. It took the Avs 20 shots at Oettinger to break through for one goal, and there wasn’t enough mojo for a second.
Although MacKinnon saw a dribbler underneath the Otter stop barely a hair from going over the line. Nichushkin hit the post. In a game of inches, the hosts spent a night on the wrong side of the coin. Glass half full: Colorado’s overdue for some puck luck. Half-empty: They need to change something around in order to start making their own.
“I thought we executed the game plan really well,” Avs forward Andrew Cogliano said. “They got a couple saves, we made a couple mistakes, they scored, we didn’t, and that was it. But overall, I thought we made a good plan coming out (of Game 2) to generate more, and get more opportunities and create more zone time and tilt the ice.”
The chances were there — Colorado landed a power play three times over the first 22 minutes of the contest. They came away with nada. The Avs are 2 for 8 in those situations this series so far, and 0 for 6, combined, over Games 2 and 3. After the Avs went 2 for 2 in Game 1, DeBoer made a tweak to his penalty kill and hasn’t looked back.
“We’ve made some adjustments,” the coach said. “I don’t want to get into them, but I’m sure they’ll look and see what they are. We made some adjustments after Game 1. And we also got a huge commitment (Saturday) blocking shots from everybody. Everyone took a turn. We got some key blocks at key times. Which is always important against a team like that.’’
Darn straight. DeBoer sees a way forward. Bednar, meanwhile, looks as if he’s seeing ghosts. Again.