David Perron lights the lamp on the Blues power play. There is a time and a place.
Nathan MacKinnon was direct in his assessment of his team's effort in a 4-1 Game 2 loss to the St. Louis Blues.
We were bad. The Western Conference second-round series is tied at one game each. We feel like we are a great team. We have to forget about it and move on.
Colorado needed overtime to win the game against St. Louis. They had 106 shot attempts on the night and pumped 54 shots at Binnington. In the second game, they had 31 shots and 60 total shot attempts.
Colorado coach Jared Bednar said that they were outworked and outskated. Early on, no one wanted to skate with the puck. They did a good job in the neutral zone, but we didn't move.
The Avs could not make much happen at 5-on-5 when they had the puck. Gabriel Landeskog scored on the power play early in the third period. Perron added another goal to make it a three goal game.
The execution was off. We were not feeling it. MacKinnon said, "Just fighting it out there." We can go on the road and steal one. Hopefully two. We have to forget about it and move on to the next thing.
The Blues entered Game 2 with a completely different approach than they did in the previous game. They didn't overcommit on their forecheck, leaving defenders back to clog the neutral zone and offer puck support in the defensive zone. The puck was managed better by them. They made the Avs defend more than they did in the first game.
St. Louis added to its lead when it had the chance, going up 2-0 on a David Perron 5-on-3 power-play goal late in the second period.
I have seen it all year. We are a good team. Blues coach Craig Berube said that they know they didn't do well enough in the first game, but they have responded all year.
The pressure of recent history has fallen on the Avalanche.
In the last three seasons, Colorado has been eliminated in the second round. In the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs, the Avalanche swept the Blues, then dominated the Golden Knights in the second round, but ended up losing in six games.
They swept the Nashville Preds, controlled the first game of the second round and then saw the Blues come back and even the series at one game apiece.
MacKinnon said that the Avs are not going to let history repeat itself.
We might dwell on it and get down on ourselves. We have a great team, we just have to pick each other up and move on. We believe we can win the series. We are not going to sweep every round. It is fine.
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