Denver, Colorado Local News
Keeler: Avalanche can’t stop scoring. Alexandar Georgiev can’t stop winning. Mea culpa, Georgie. You got right.
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Lazarus of Bethany’s got nuttin’ on Alexandar Georgiev of Bulgaria. Tough times don’t last. Tough goalies do.
“I think in Game 1, we didn’t give him a lot of chances to make quality saves,” Avalanche defenseman Josh Manson told me before Colorado and Georgie wiped out the Whiteoot in Winnipeg with a 6-3 victory late Tuesday. “I felt like a lot of (shots) were going in from the backside or (to) his right, which is tough.
“And then that can rattle your confidence a little bit. But he’s stepped up and just playing like how he can.”
He grounded the Jets for four straight games. He won twice in Manitoba. He rose to the moment. He blocked out the jeers. He stiffed the haters.
Forgive me, Georgie.
This is how Lord Stanley comes home.
Down 3-1 in a best-of-seven series Tuesday, Winnipeg threw everything at the crease that wasn’t nailed down. The Jets blistered Georgiev with 19 shots in the second period alone. They came away with one goal to show for it.
Game 1: Seven goals against. Games 2-5: Eight goals. Combined.
Forgive me, Georgie.
This is starting to look familiar.
Remember that opening-round whupping of Nashville two years ago? The one where the Avs outscored the Predators 21-9 in four games? The one that got Colorado’s Stanley Cup party train off the platform and rolling toward Union Station?
As first impressions go, this series victory was the more impressive of the two.
Winnipeg had home ice. Winnipeg had momentum. Winnipeg had mojo. Winnipeg had arguably the top team defense in the NHL. Winnipeg had the best goaltender in the Western Conference. The ’22 Preds were forced to roll out rookie backup Connor Ingram to defend the net, effectively ending that fight before it ever really got started.
The Stanley Cup champs two years ago averaged 5.25 goals in smashing Smashville. Against Connor Hellebuyck, the Vezina Trophy finalist who’d shut them out on April 13 at Ball Arena, they averaged 5.6 goals per game.
Forgive me, Georgie.
This stuff is historic.
The Avs became just the fourth team in NHL history to notch at least five goals in the first five games of a series. The Jets became the first club to ever allow five or more games in each of their opening five playoff tilts.
Hellebuyck had given up five goals or more just four times during the regular season. Colorado peppered him for five or more three times in 10 days.
Forgive me, Georgie.
This gets better.
Cynics will cite the bloody cut last week that knocked Jets defenseman Brenden Dillon out of the series. They’ll point to the nasty shot that Winnipeg center Vladislav Namestnikov took to the head, shelving him for Game 5.
Yet they were both good to go in Game 1. The Avs scored six.
They looked fine in Game 2 and Game 3. The Avs scored five. Then six again.
Forgive me, Georgie.
This is deep.
Every line brought the heat. And a mean streak. Precedent says Colorado’s Stanley Cup run will probably go as far as the bottom-six forwards can carry it. If Tuesday was any harbinger of what’s to come, best find a comfy chair.
About five-and-a-half minutes into the second period, the score tied at 1-all, fourth-line center Yakov Trenin put down a marker and laid down the law. Trenin was one of GM Chris MacFarland’s under-the-radar deadline pickups, a banger from Nashville, a 6-foot-2 grinder who got swept away by the Avs two years ago.
The Russian pretty much single-handedly badgered his way from behind the net to the corner of Hellebuyck’s left eye, out-hustling at least two Jets defenders to a loose puck, staying with the play through contact, and whipping the biscuit past Bucky for a 2-1 Colorado lead.
Forgive me, Georgie.
This is how you flip the script.
Steel between the ears.
Stone between the pipes.
“Have you ever seen a guy flip a switch in just a few days the way Georgiev has?” a reporter asked Manson after Game 4.
He pondered for a second.
“I don’t think so.” Manson replied. “I think that’s a really tough job for goalies to have to do that. And kudos to him.”
Forgive me, Georgie.
This is gonna be fun.
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Sean Keeler
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