LOS ANGELES — How bad must a team’s performance be for the coach to feel lucky to be tied at intermission — right after coughing up a two-goal lead?
The answer was in the Avalanche locker room late Saturday night.
“I thought we were lucky to be tied,” Jared Bednar said after a bizarre 4-3 win over the Kings. “We were lucky to be tied after one. We were lucky to be tied after two.”
The paradox came after two. Colorado (48-24-6) had returned from a hideous first period, built a 2-0 lead with puck luck and other fortuitous favors, then instantly surrendered that advantage. It was square going into the third period of a crucial game, after 40 thoroughly uninspiring minutes.
But Bednar felt lucky it was tied.
That’s why the win that followed is perhaps the Avalanche’s most important of the 2022-23 season.
Not because of what it meant for the division standings. Not because it allowed the Avs to protect their claim to first place over Dallas with four regular-season games remaining. But because of what the self-dubbed “ugly” victory said about Bednar’s team — particularly its depth — 10 days before the playoffs.
“It’s a big game because — nothing against some other teams (at) different spots in their rebuilds, where they’re at in the standings — but you have to be able to get depth scoring against teams that are pushing into the playoffs and looking to make a run,” Bednar said. “That’s all you’re going to face another week from now.”
Minnesota was still fresh on the Avs’ memories. In a 4-2 loss to the Wild on March 29, Nathan MacKinnon and Mikko Rantanen were contained. Neither of them registered a point. Colorado lost 4-2, and Bednar called out unnamed depth players for lacking effort.
The top line was thwarted again in Los Angeles. No points for MacKinnon. None for Rantanen. They were hounded by the Kings’ top line and defensive pairing. “Those guys looked like they were running out of gas to me,” Bednar said. “… Obviously they didn’t have their stuff. They got scored on a couple times, didn’t create a whole lot. But it has to be up to the rest of the team on nights like that.”
In the three games between the Minnesota and Los Angeles games, MacKinnon and Rantanen were invincible. They combined for 19 points. The rest of the team combined for 19 points. So in Los Angeles, unfolding was the same template Minnesota used. Make the rest of the Avs create offense.
This time, they did.
“I think that’s what makes us a great team,” said defenseman Brad Hunt, who scored the go-ahead goal with 18:10 remaining. “It’s like everybody’s on the same page. Everybody buys into the system. And we move forward and pump each other up.”
The players who scored Colorado’s four goals entered L.A. without a goal in 51 consecutive games between them: 23 games for Hunt, 20 for Alex Newhook and eight for Denis Malgin. It was a procession of unlikely heroes two days after the victory parade for the likely heroes. (MacKinnon reached 100 points and Rantanen reached 50 goals in back-to-back games in San Jose.)
Hunt wouldn’t have even been in the lineup if Bo Byram hadn’t fallen ill between Thursday and Saturday. The Avs needed a sixth defenseman, and Hunt — who recently cleared waivers for the second time this season — has been traveling with the team as a healthy scratch. He filled in.
“That’s been my position for pretty much my whole career,” he said. “So it’s not something that’s new. I stay ready to play no matter what.”
Malgin and Newhook are both depth forwards with a considerable amount of skill and streakiness. The last time Malgin had scored was also a two-goal game. He piled up three in a four-game stretch at one point. But his recent drought had sunk him from a brief top-line stint back into other holes in the lineup.
Malgin didn’t even think his first goal had a chance. “I saw it went behind the net,” he said. But it ricocheted off the boards, off the goalie’s back and into the net. That spurred Malgin’s confidence, and he ended up credited with the game-winning goal in the third period.
He has a chance to appear in a playoff game for the first time in his career in the coming weeks.
“I’m not thinking that far ahead,” Malgin said. Newhook is.
“Playing teams that are out of the playoffs, the intensity seems to not be the same that it is when you play a team like this, that you could potentially face,” the 22-year-old noticed. The Kings were fierce — they still could be a first-round opponent for Colorado, mathematically.
“They were more competitive and outworked us,” Bednar said, “and it looked to me like it was just lack of energy. I felt like our intentions were in the right place, but we just didn’t do a very good job tonight.”
Now the Avs know they can win a game like that against a team they might see again soon.
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