The Landy Man Can. Compher awakens. Jost gets involved. Hell, the Avs have a galldang second line! And Zadorov continues his hit parade, all narrated by the booming Gary Thorne voice in my head.
It’s the Dog and Pony Show to your face!
And like that, after a game in which the Avalanche were superior largely because of the emergence of J.T. Compher’s Magical Menagerie of Mystery Men we find our heroes returning to the land of the ten dollar coffee for more of the hockey after a heroic overtime goal by Gabriel Landeskog.
Hooray for game sevens!
Can the Avs do what they can away from the Can as they did last night at the Can?
You know the Landy Man Can!
Five Thoughts
1. Captain Avalanche
For all but the most die hard Avalanche fans, Gabriel Landeskog has seemed like something of an enigma. While Nathan MacKinnon has soaked up the superstar attention and Mikko Rantanen has provided spectacular passes, it was, and has always been, the Avalanche captain who has done much of the dirty work on the best line in hockey.
Landy isn’t a typical superstar team captain but he gets the job done because he is willing to get dirty. Hell, Landy thrives on diving into the corners and emerging with a solid punch to the throat of the opposition. Admittedly, up until the last couple years I often looked at his numbers and shrugged. Fantasy-wise, he wasn’t much of a producer outside of fairly inconsistent twenty goal, seventy five penalty minute seasons, which made him a nice, middle round multi-category player but that was about it. However, life isn’t always numbers, and as I have ranted about before saber metrics and analytics can drag the fun out of sports more often than not. In hockey, heart, battling, leading, and teaching still matter. The Avalanche captain demonstrated those traits tonight as he has been doing all series. This time his hard work paid off with a game winner in overtime.
2. It’s About Damn Time!
With three points from J.T. Compher, a goal from Tyson Jost, and solid contributions from Carl Soderberg, the Avalanche’s true second line at long last joined this hockey tournament. San Jose is a different hockey team when the Avalanche are able to throw together their super line and get support from their second unit. Suddenly, the Sharks can’t sit on MacK like he’s a lawn chair.
For all their greatness, Burns, Karlsson, and Vlassic cannot defend against the speedy youth of the Avalanche when they are rolling depth. They especially have trouble when the Avalanche launch at them like they’ve been fired from a cannon, like Compher did when he almost sent Erik Karlsson back to 1955. If we get a repeat of the Avalanche we saw last night this will be a very, very interesting game seven in San Jose.
3. Gruuuuu!
Yeah, the Avalanche goalie let in a gut punch of a game-tying goal off of Nikita Zadorov’s skate, but once again Philipp Grubauer proved that he is the solution in net for the Avalanche. His positioning has been spot on and his recoveries after the first save have allowed his cat-like reflexes to take over. It’s such a pleasure to watch good, consistent goaltending in Denver again.
4. About that Rantanen hit.
At this point everyone who had followed the Avalanche knows that you never, ever, put your head down over the middle of the ice. Markus Naslund and Steve Moore, anyone? Last night Mikko Rantanen learned that rule the hard way against the wrong guy. Brent Burns is pulling no punches in this series and although it pains me to admit it, Rantanen should have known better than to watch his feet with Mongo roaming the ice.
5. For game seven the Avalanche return to the land of the people who get rich off of selling your grandmother’s personal data. I have two predictions for what should be a very compelling game seven between the Avs and the team that will absolutely, definitely, go Stanley Cup-less yet again.
First, Matt Calvert will make a triumphant return to the squad and be instrumental in at least one Avalanche goal. Second, the Avalanche will take the series with another stunning overtime goal after Nathan MacKinnon finds enough space to operate.
Mark it dude.
Until next time, Avarinos.
Go squad!
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