Initial observations from the Avalanche’s 3-2 win over the Seattle Kraken in Game 2 of their first-round Stanley Cup playoff series.
1. For Devon Toews, Game 2 redemption was sweet
Why are the Stanley Cup Playoffs the best postseason tourney in North American sports? Because a Game 1 goat can turn around and become a Game 2 GOAT. Enter Avs defenseman Devon Toews, whose nifty rebound wrister with 7:01 left in regulation gave the defending NHL champs the eventual game-winner and their first lead of the series. Just two nights earlier, the veteran blueliner’s sloppy pass led directly to a Seattle goal in a spirit-crushing, 3-1 defeat in Game 1. As a position group, Colorado’s defensemen still look rusty on the whole. But with Toews’ Thursday night laser and Cale Makar recovering from a slow start to pick up an assist and get into a rare scrap, they’re trending up as they hit road.
2. Georgiev giveth, and, thankfully, taketh away
Whether he wants it or not, the game finds Avs netminder Alexandar Georgiev. In the first, he had Colorado fans cringing when he fed a loose puck to Bo Byram while failing to realize Byram didn’t have a stick at the time and had to kick the puck out of danger. But the goalie more than made up for it later with a string of gorgeous saves in the second period. And none was prettier than a leg extension that stone-walled a 3-on-1 Seattle break with 35 seconds left in a tie game. Kraken winger Jordan Eberle is going to see Georgiev’s acrobatic save in his sleep for many nights to come.
3. Kraken opened up doing to Avs what Avs did to everybody in ’22
Makar and Toews getting beat on a 2-on-1 break? One goalie getting peppered and the other having nothing to do? It’s as if the Kraken stole the Avs’ Stanley-Cup winning script from the spring of 2022 and started whacking Colorado (and Avs fans) in the mug with it during the first period. The majority of the action took place in the Avs’ defensive zone, and the hosts didn’t handle the pressure well. Colorado gave it away three times to the Kraken’s one over the first 20 minutes, and, according to the web site NaturalStatTrick.com, had surrendered 10 scoring chances in the first to Seattle while producing only two themselves. Fortunately, the defending champs flipped that ratio in the second stanza (13-6).
