Before the playoffs began, Alex Tanguay served up a challenge.
To himself.
And how has he done?
“I feel like I’ve let a lot of guys down on this team by the way I’ve played,” the Avalanche winger said Wednesday. “I’m definitely frustrated about it. I would have liked to come into the playoffs healthy, but that’s not the case. I have to find a way to help the guys a little more than I have.”
That was a backhanded confession, again getting it on the record that the sprained knee he suffered March 19 hasn’t completely healed.
“I’m healthy enough to play,” Tanguay said. “Obviously, the timing is difficult, but I’m not going to use any excuses. I know what I have to do and I haven’t been doing it.”
Other than his two-goal, one-assist night against Dallas in Game 3, punctuated with his ricochet off defenseman Willie Mitchell’s skate to win the game in overtime, Tanguay has been largely invisible in the postseason. His only other point was a Game 5 assist against the Stars, and he has been a part of the offensive malaise in the three consecutive losses to the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim.
He is 26, coming into the prime years. By now he was supposed to have taken that next step, into that undefinable territory of superstar. You don’t know how to define the term. You just know when a player has become one.
Tanguay hasn’t.
As recently as two years ago, “last season” in the NHL, he contended for the league scoring title before missing the final 11 games of the regular season with a sprained knee.
This season, he was the Avalanche’s leading scorer before he was hurt at San Jose and sat out 10 games, and Joe Sakic overtook him. Tanguay finished with 29 goals, 78 points. He was headed for a good, not great, season before he came up limping.
This isn’t just about injuries derailing him. Tanguay has this agonizing way of skating to the brink of stardom, then putting on the brakes. He should have been on the Canadian Olympic team this year, especially if it came down to Tanguay or the bad karma man himself, Todd Bertuzzi. There were other reasonable alternatives to picking Bertuzzi, too. But the secondary point is that a couple of years ago it seemed Tanguay was getting to the point where he was going to be one of those guys whose names the Canadian czars wrote down before asking: “And who else?” He didn’t ever make that kind of “no-brainer” list, and his slow start to the regular season didn’t convince Wayne Gretzky and the rest of the Hockey Canada powers to add him.
The acid test is the playoffs.
In the past three Avalanche runs, Tanguay hasn’t done much. As he at least acknowledges, aches, pains and frustrations can’t explain that away. This time he hasn’t been capable of jump-starting a second line.
The Avalanche isn’t making the Ducks pay for or reconsider the wisdom of their blatant preoccupation with neutralizing Sakic’s line. Coach Joel Quenneville used Tanguay some on the point of the power play in Game 3, and I still think a full-time deployment of a Tanguay-Sakic-Milan Hejduk line would make sense. But Quenneville’s attempt to spread the offense is defensible. It just isn’t working.
“This is the coach’s decision, and I’m never going to complain about what happened or things like that,” Tanguay said. “I’m here to play. … I know I’m capable of doing a lot more. It’s definitely frustrating. But tomorrow’s another day and the sun’s going to shine (Thursday) morning in Denver, and hopefully we can come out with a smile after the game. I know I’m capable of a lot more, and it’s up to me to answer the bell.”
Did that mean he had checked the weather report?
“No,” he said, smiling. “But I’m sure it will be sunny (Thursday).”
Take a look outside. Was he right?
“We’re up against a wall, no doubt about it,” Tanguay said. “With the pride we have in this dressing room, we certainly don’t want to lose in front our fans, especially being swept. So right now it’s a question for us of making sure we play our best game. And then from there we hope we can build a little confidence and things might be different.”
It will help if he plays like a superstar.
Staff writer Terry Frei can be reached at 303-820-1895 or tfrei@denverpost.com.
