Is the Avalanche too soft to win the Stanley Cup?
Them’s fightin’ words. Yes, they are.
No professional athlete, particulary one that laces up his skates and plays a sport as relentlessly physical as hockey, takes kindly to any suggestion he isn’t tough enough to be a champion.
But just as there’s no getting around Vegas forward Ryan Reaves without a fight, there’s no denying the in-your-grill challenge punctuated with every heavy forecheck during Colorado’s 3-2 overtime loss to the meanest team in the West.
“We were not physical enough,” Avalanche winger Joonas Donskoi said Saturday.
In Las Vegas, the Knights are golden, beloved by fans. But this big and physical team brings a Darth Vader vibe everywhere else it travels in the league. And these Dark Knights are itching to find out: Is Colorado too soft to win the Cup?
“They bang bodies pretty good,” said Colorado coach Jared Bednar, quick to note he respects Vegas as much for deft stick-handling as bruising hip checks.
A festering rivalry between Colorado and Las Vegas is just what this hockey town needs. Not to get all nostalgic, but am I the only one around here who misses the old blood feud between the Avs and Red Wings?
Remember? In Game 6 of the 1996 Western Conference finals, Colorado’s Claude Lemieux checked Kris Draper from behind, causing the jaw of the Detroit center to shatter against the boards. The Avs won the series, but didn’t exactly bury the hatchet. “I can’t believe I shook this guy’s friggin’ hand,” Dino Ciccarelli said of Lemieux.
And a blood feud was born.
From the don’t-blink blur that is Nathan MacKinnon with the puck glued to his stick and the ginsu-knife-edge cuts of Cale Makar, the Avs play a beautiful game that makes them Wizards of Awe’s. Colorado can elevate hockey to an art form. But is that the best way to raise the Cup?
This is not to suggest that the Dark Knights are dirty, although forward Aex Tuch once told the Las Vegas Review-Journal: “I’d rather get hit by a pickup truck than fight Ryan Reaves.”
And a reasonable person with 20/20 eyesight might disagree with my generous assessment of how Vegas plays hockey, especially after reviewing videotape of a nasty hit Keegan Kolesar delivered by leaving his skates and injuring young defenseman Bo Byram during the Avs’ freewheeling 5-1 victory Thursday against the toughest team in the West.
“We had a lot to prove after getting spanked in the last game,” said Vegas forward Max Pacioretty, who scored the game-winner in overtime by crashing hard to the net after an extremely untimely and bad break of Colorado defenseman Devon Toews’ broken stick preventing him from clearing a loose puck in front of the Avalanche goal.
Don’t get it twisted. Colorado doesn’t fear Vegas. Kudos for end-of-the-bench defenseman Dan Renouf for dropping his gloves and trading punches with Kolesar fewer than 90 seconds into the opening period to remind the Dark Knights that trying to bully Byram would not be tolerated.
That Darth Vader sense of dread, however, in unrelenting. With a face-off in front of Avs goalie Philipp Grubauer, Vegas coach Pete DeBoer will sometimes send out Reaves and his gritty mates on the fourth line, in order to flex what Bednar acknowledges as “some juice and some jam.”
Joe Sakic has done a splendid job as the architect of the Avs. Is it fair, however, to wonder if Super Joe has overlooked the fact it’s nearly impossible to win 16 playoff games without getting down and dirty when a hard-fought series inevitably gets chippy?
At some point, almost every champ needs the particular type of ornery brought by Ian Cole or the bone-rattling thump delivered by Nikita Zadorov. Let’s hope Sakic doesn’t regret removing that sandpaper and hammer from his burgundy-and-blue tool box.
Bednar insists the physicality of Vegas “doesn’t intimidate our team.”
No argument here, coach. Captain Gabe Landeskog won’t back down from a tussle. And Colorado never plays scared.
“We try to use our speed and relentless puck pursuit,” Bednar said.
It’s an identity the Avalanche tries to establish every time it takes the ice. But it’s that very identity Vegas will try to lean on heavily, until the Dark Knights not only take away all the open ice Colorado craves, but put the squeeze on every breath the Avs take.
There is no guarantee Colorado and Vegas will bump into each other in the playoffs. But it would be a pity if they don’t escalate these delicious hostilities with the NHL’s special brand of postseason passion.
There isn’t a blood feud between the most artistic skaters and most disagreeable bullies in the West.
Well, at least not yet. Give it time.
Your Artsy Avs and the Dark Knights seem made for each other as playoff foils who would foster old-time hockey hate from the opening puck drop to the handshake line after Game 7, with a beautifully brutal noise only the best of NHL enemies can make.
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