Nazem Kadri’s rap sheet is so long, at this point, you could zipline that bugger over the Royal Gorge.
Counting Friday night, the Avs center’s now been suspended six times by the NHL since November 2013. Itap the man’s fourth multi-game suspension over his last 23 playoff appearances.
I don’t care what the NHL rulebook says. I don’t care what a good citizen Kadri had been in burgundy for the 18 months prior to Wednesday. Nasty Naz is the walking, breathing, skating, head-hunting definition of a “repeat offender.”
Eight games? He got what was coming. He got lucky.
“Itap a lot of games,” Avs winger Brandon Saad said of Kadri after Colorado stomped the Blues in St. Louis 5-1 to snatch a 3-0 stranglehold in their first-round playoff series. “Thatap a tough one for our team. Have to solider on, next man up, and try to win games without him.”
If Game 3 was any harbinger, that shouldn’t be much of an issue. Not during this round, kids.
The Avs are in the Blues’ heads now, as deep and malignant as an ingrown toenail. Coach Jared Bednar’s bunch is doing what great teams do come Cup time — finding different ways, through different heroes, to make the same, salient, unassailable point.
Superior speed, skill and stars pulled the sled in Games 1 and 2. Friday, the Avs mangled St. Louis with guts and depth.
Avs rookie Alex Newhook unleashed his inner Cale Makar on St. Louis, notching his first career NHL goal, a game-winner from the right circle 12:37 into the second period. Defenseman Ryan Graves survived a Blues horse collar to rack up a goal and two assists, while goaltender Philipp Grubauer turned away 31 of 32 St. Louis shots.
“I don’t remember the last time I had a hockey game on my birthday,” chuckled Graves, who turned 26. “Last year we were in quarantine, so itap (a lot) better than that one, for sure.”
As the Colorado roster was fighting over the fork with which to stick into the Blues’ backsides, the NHL announced Kadri would be suspended eight contests for his shoulder-to-head shot on Blues defenseman Justin Faulk in Game 2.
“I thought the general rule of (thumb) is, in the playoffs, you get a little less,” Bednar said, decrying the punishment. “He definitely got more.”
Hey, in a perfect world, the Kadri strike zone wuld apply to Washington’s Tom Wilson or Vegas’ Keegan Kolesar, too. The NHL’s Department of Player Safety makes the NCAA’s crack enforcement staff look positively apolitical and homogeneous in comparison.
On Planet Bettman, justice is relative. Relative and provincial. And the real shame of the Naz news landing when it did was the degree to which it sucked the oxygen out of the cooler narratives of the evening, the way it overshadowed the Avs’ best playoff performance to date.
Cripes, were they surgical. Especially late. St. Louis, as you’d expect, came out swinging with everything but clenched fists. The hosts outhit the Avs 18-4 in the first period, chippy to the last.
Yet Colorado managed to keep its head and its collective cool, an impressive two-fer when blood pressures start running that high on the road.
The snapshot of the evening, the sequence that flipped the script, landed with about 12 seconds left in the opening stanza. With the Avs plugging away on hope and fumes, Grubauer stoned the Blues’ Ivan Barbashev three straight times with his leg.
As play stopped and bodies poured into the crease, Barbashev appeared to wrap a paw around Graves’ neck and fling him to the ice. A dogpile ensued.
Both men got roughing calls out of the brouhaha, which was laughable. But the game remained scoreless, even though the Avs had taken the Blues’ best shots, right in the kisser, and everybody knew it. The St. Louis bench included.
Graves broke the deadlock about two minutes into the second period after zipping out of the penalty box, and that was pretty much that.
For all that shoving, all that machismo, the Blues got what they deserved in the end. So did Kadri, now that you mention it.
