Is it okay to be nitpicky about the Colorado Avalanche and their 2-0 series lead against the Los Angeles Kings? After all, in most of the other NHL playoff series – including Minnesota at Dallas – the road team has already won once. It’s great to be up 2-0, right? Nothing to be unhappy about.
Or is there?
Unhappy is too strong a word. Concerned might be better. After all, following a pair of narrow 2-1 wins, the second one in overtime when anything can happen, Colorado is realistically just a bad bounce or two from being tied or even trailing in the series to the team with the lowest regular-season point total of any team that made it into the postseason. Is the fact that the league’s best offense has been largely stifled by the conference’s eighth seed any sort of red flag moving forward?
In both games, the Kings have set the ‘pace,’ as it were – which is to say that there really hasn’t been any pace at all. It’s been a penalty-filled, muck-and-grind pair of games. The Avs haven’t played their style of hockey at all – at least, not with any real success. Of course, the playoffs are typically like this. Chippy, lots of hits before and after the whistle; a physical game that goes to the limits of fair play when the Stanley Cup is on the line. So it’s good the Avs can find a way to win this way. They seem fine with it, so we should be too, right?
Maybe. Yes, being able to play a more physical brand of hockey when needed is a big boost. But what happens when the competition gets much better?
The arch-nemesis Stars – who play a physical style themselves – got their doors blown off in Game 1 against the more free-wheeling Wild, but bounced back to tie the series in their second home game, and won in double-overtime (in Minneapolis) in Game 3. Avs faithful are naturally rooting for Minnesota (however distasteful that may be) to get rid of the team that has been Colorado’s Achilles’ heel in recent postseasons. But what if that doesn’t happen? What if Dallas keeps doing Dallas things and the two teams with the best records in the Western Conference end up meeting in the second round, as expected? Will the L.A. series have been a blessing at that point… or another blueprint for the Stars to follow?
Perhaps head coach Jared Bednar and captain Gabe Landeskog are right, and the L.A. series is good “practice” for facing Dallas again. Or perhaps seeing how the undermanned Kings are keeping Nathan MacKinnon, Martin Necas and the Avs’ other high-flying snipers off the score sheet is good scouting info for the Stars?
This first-round series isn’t over of course, and maybe the Avs will break out and beat Kings goaltender Anton Forsberg a half-dozen times in Games 3 and 4. Maybe Colorado rolls into L.A. and skates circles around a team that made the playoffs almost entirely on their ability to drag their opponents into overtime during the regular season. After all, it’s not how, it’s how many when it comes to accumulating points in the NHL.
Style points don’t matter on the scoreboard, but they might matter when it comes to what style of play best suits the best team in the league during the regular season. Can Colorado win another Stanley Cup this season if they continue to play the style of game… that best suits the other team?
Are the Avs’ struggles on offense against the Kings a red flag? Mile High Sports.
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