What appeared to be the most brilliant move in hockey lore turns out to be the only hope we had.
In hindsight, this was dejavu all over again. Patrick Roy ended his career losing a 7th game to the Minnesota Wild and once again the Wild take out the Av's in 7. The method to their madness was clear and consistent: put people in front of the net and pepper Semyon Varlamov with as many shots as you can, and chase the puck into the zone when you do. In other words, the Wild beat us with a heavy dose of dump and chase.
To the credit of the Avalanche, they understood what was happening to them, and felt confident that they had the ability to do the same thing to Wild. The Wild almost doubled the number of shots that the Av's took. In the end, what we hoped would become a dump and chase approach never got out of the penetrate and kick mode. The Av's might have been too young to know better, but they also might have been too good for their own good.
The return of Matt Duchene appeared to be the key to victory. The Av's simply possessed too much fire speed to be denied shots and found themselves up a goal with minutes left on the clock. Unfortunately, those minutes proved to be way too long for a young team that didn't understand the importance of keeping the pressure on Minnesota instead of milking their lead to victory. It wasn't a matter of needing to score again as it was needing to keep the action in the Wild zone.
Overtime is such a roll of the dice, but it typically favors the team who fought to create the overtime. The Wild created their chance and good fortune took care of the rest.
In hindsight, Av's nation was hoping for an immense level of talent to overcome a huge amount of deficiencies. It's not hard to see why Matt Cook went after Tyson Barrie. Defensive scoring was the one area Minnesota could not account for with their neutral zone trap defense. If Denver sports fans have a beef with the Barrie injury I would encourage them to remember the Wes Welker rub play on Aqib Talib that allowed us to get massacred in the Superbowl two weeks later.
In sports, stuff happens, including injury and a healthy Avalanche roster should be overjoyed with the prospects for next year, even if disappointed with what could have been. In the end Minnesota played better and it would have taken 3 miracle overtime victories for the Av's to advance. You might be able to win a series on a lucky bounce, but no team wins the Stanley Cup on luck alone. In the end, this team was simply too young to understand the intensity of a chase for the Cup.
POSTSCRIPT: Much like the Av's of Patrick Roy's era, the Av's have now established a core of players that are now household names even to casual fans. Nathan MacKinnon, Gabriel Landiskog, Matt Duchene, Ryan O'Reilly and Semyon Varlamov (maybe even P.A. Parenteau) are mainstays for years to come. Even the Great One, Wayne Gretzky had to acknowledge that he see's the exploits of Nathan MacKinnon.
POST-POSTSCRIPT: Joey Hishon?..........WOW!
POST-POST-POSTSCRIPT: Boy do we need a great year from the Colorado Rockies.
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