CALGARY, Alberta — Following his game-winning overtime goal in the Avalanche’s playoff-clinching triumph over Winnipeg on April 4, long-tenured defenseman Erik Johnson told me he couldn’t remember the last time he had so much fun playing hockey.
It was a genuine remark, but now just a playoff-series win away of becoming second-fiddle.
In that April 4 game, Johnson saw the Avs claw back from a 2-0 deficit, tie the game midway through the third period and then — when only needing a point to clinch the franchise’s first back-to-back postseason appearance since 2008 — take a bench minor for too-many-men with 1:26 to go in regulation.
“You should have heard the groans on the bench,” Johnson said of the game in which he scored the OT goal after he spearheaded the late penalty kill. “We were like, ‘You have got to be kidding me.’ (But) we killed it off, they hit a pipe. I did a freaking backflip trying to block a (Patrik) Laine shot. It was loud in there, it sure was fun. I can’t wait to play in front of those fans in the playoffs.”
Johnson, 31, is poised to do just that next week, for the first time in six years. He didn’t play in last year’s first-round playoff series against Nashville. He was out with a knee injury, missing all three games in Denver, including Game 6 in which the Predators won the series with a dominating performance at the Pepsi Center.
Johnson has played in 717 NHL regular-season games but just seven in the Stanley Cup playoffs — each in 2013 when the Avs fell to Minnesota in seven attempts. If the Western Conference’s eighth-seeded Avs upset the No. 1 Calgary Flames in the upcoming playoff-opening series, Johnson will have bettered his career-best moment April 4.
“I’ve been here longer than anyone else has in this room. Almost a decade,” said Johnson, who was acquired from the St. Louis Blues late in the 2010-11 season. “It’s a long time. I’ve taken a lot of pride in being an Avalanche. I love playing for this team, the city, the organization. I put a lot of onus on my shoulders so it feels good to go back-to-back in the playoffs for the first time in a long time.”
Johnson likes to talk about his longevity with the Avalanche because he’s now seeing the fruits of his labor. He isn’t like Matt Duchene, the former face of the franchise who gave up on the club and sought a trade to begin the 2017-18 season.
“There’s been some bright spots. But there’s been a lot of second-guessing yourself,” Johnson said of his tenure with the Avs. “I know a lot of guys in here who maybe could have taken the easy way out, maybe asked for a change of scenery (because) it wasn’t working out here. But for Gabe (Landeskog), Tyson (Barrie), myself, Nate (MacKinnon), we just wanted to stick it out. You want to finish off the business that you started. We’ve put a lot of time into this team.”
Johnson dons an A on his sweater as an alternate captain. But when you continually talk to the guy, he seems like the face of the franchise. He’s the guy who probably wants most to see the club win a playoff series for the first time since 2008.
“We realize everyone probably outside of Denver isn’t giving us much of a chance but we’re going to embrace the underdog role,” Johnson said of the series with the Flames. “Last year was maybe a feel-good story; no one expected us to be there. But this year we expected it and in our minds, we’re playing late in the spring, early this summer.”
