Sometimes, the doubters are louder than the confident. This is true in the case of The Athletic senior writer Michael Russo, who made a bold statement towards the Colorado Avalanche ahead of their Stanley Cup playoff series against his Minnesota Wild.
I italicized “his” because he is a fan of the Wild, which may be the biggest reason for his statement, which I’ll get to in a minute, though he claims that is not the reason.
Russo stated that he’ll “probably” pick the Wild in this series because he doesn’t “think Colorado, going up against L.A. has been tested yet and I think it’s going to be a little bit of a culture shock when they all of a sudden have four lines of Minnesota Wild.”
Russo also said that he thinks that physicality is going to be a big thing in this upcoming series.
It’s certainly possible that Russo is correct, but you can’t automatically dismiss the Avalanche. How would they suddenly fall off after such a dominant regular season? Russo is acting as if the matchup will be completely on-sided. I can guarantee to you that won’t be the case.
The Avalanche were the best team throughout the entire regular season, earning the Presidents’ trophy, and goals-for, while also having the lowest goals-against. I don’t recommend the Avalanche being down heading into the third period, but if they do, they can continue to defend their reputation of being the best third period team in the league. The stakes are the highest they have been all season.
And, well, ‘culture shock’? That just is dumb. Jared Bednar is leading a veteran team, with one of the best captains in the NHL. They’re coming off the best season of their history, and that is being ignored with that ridiculous statement.
Five Avalanche players have two goals through four games in the postseason. I also want to quickly address the chatter that has been going around regarding Nathan MacKinnon’s total empty-net goals. Give me a break.
Teams pull their goaltender because they need to get an extra skater on the ice to try and catch up. While MacKinnon has eight empty-net goals during the playoffs in his career, including one this postseason, the big picture is that the Avalanche are winning and forcing teams to do that.
That talk needs to stop, because it is just a lazy way of ignoring MacKinnon’s overall greatness.
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