It’s a feat that only four teams have done in NHL history. Coming back to win a series when down 0-3. (Let’s forget that no team has done it in a conference final).
Sunday night’s Game 3 was critical and the Avs came out strong, taking a 3-0 lead in the first period. Then came the team’s arch nemesis. The second period.
Sparing the pain of me having to relive the rest of the game, let’s just say Vegas would go on to score 4 unanswered goals and tack on an empty netter to finish the game. (Yes, technically it was 5 unanswered goals.)
So that’s it. Colorado is cooked. On Tuesday, Vegas should complete the sweep, right? Not so fast.
While the final scores have favored Vegas, it hasn’t been all Golden Knights in this series.
The Avalanche’s achilles heel has been the second period. Vegas has outscored Colorado 5-0 in the middle frame. The key to slowing down the Golden Knights in the second period will be puck control. A big part of this will be face-off wins. Vegas has dominated face-off wins the whole series. Colorado will need to find a way to even this out to start swinging momentum.
Getting Gabriel Landeskog or Brock Nelson in the face-off circle against Jack Eichel as much as you can will help. Eichel has been a big part of the Vegas face-off dominance.
The other part will be puck possession. In Sunday’s game, Colorado had 18 giveaways. Nearly half of those giveaways happened in, you guessed it, the second period. A prime example of this was about 4 minutes into the second period of Game 3. Jack Drury won the defensive end face-off (good) to Sam Malinksi. Malinski then gave the puck away to Mitch Marner (bad) that lead to the Golden Knights’ second goal (worse).
We have seen Colorado get off to early leads in this series. It is not unlikely that they can do it again in Game 4. The biggest obstacle will be that pesky second period. If Colorado can control the puck, avoid unnecessary turnovers and giveaways, there is hope for Avalanche fans.
Note: Readers who follow the Golden Knights closely will be quick to point out how this article focuses all on Colorado’s needs. That is true. I live in Colorado and follow the Avalanche closely. But, let’s face it, Vegas just needs one win to move on to their third Stanley Cup Final appearance. There isn’t much they need to adjust (if anything) to move on.
