Don’t think Martin Necas is tough enough? Brother, you try dressing next to Brent Burns for seven months straight.
“How do you respond to playoff pressure?” I asked Necas, the Avalanche’s swift winger, after practice at Family Sports Center, as Colorado prepped for Game 1 of its Stanley Cup Playoffs showdown with Minnesota. “You looked a lot more relaxed later in the Kings series …”
“Yeah, I think …” Necas started.
Beard break. Burns, unwrapping his gear to Marty’s left, leaned in, mighty whiskers first, from the locker next door.
“I wanna hear this dumb answer from this guy,” the 41-year-old Avs defenseman chuckled, beaming like a wicked uncle.
To this, Necas just grinned.
“No, I think it’s good,” Necas continued. “Pressure is a privilege, right? So it’s nice to be in this spot. And obviously, we …”
Burns rose, stretched to his full 6-foot-5, and headed for the nearest exit.
“You said (if) you wear those loose pants, you get better blood flow, you’re feeling good,” the big man cracked as he left.
“Once you get to 40,” Necas countered, “you get nervous, but …”
Another grin.
Where were we?
“No, I think it’s great,” Necas said.
“You know, it’s great to be in the spotlight, to be honest. We’re all enjoying it.”
You could see it in 88’s eyes. You could see it in the way they lit up after Nathan MacKinnon’s power play goal last Sunday against the Kings — the Avs’ first in 10 postseason attempts with the extra man.
Necas didn’t get an assist on the scoresheet, but Nate Dogg’s look on the one-timer couldn’t have happened without him. Marty crashed the crease as captain Gabriel Landeskog set up below the net, occupying a Los Angeles defender and opening up a shooting lane for MacKinnon to tickle the twine.
“I feel like, as the (Kings) series went on, we had a lot of chances,” said Necas, who put up two points for the series but was scoreless on 12 shots. “Obviously, we didn’t score as much as maybe we wanted to (on the first line), but just like (coach Jared Bednar) says, defense first. That’s what we did. The chances were there, and we’re going to keep scoring.”
Necas has played in 11 Stanley Cup games with the Avs since coming over in that tectonic trade with Carolina 17 months ago. They’re 7-4 in those tilts. Colorado’s 4-1 whenever 88 records at least a point in the postseason.
Necas doesn’t have to be for a roster this deep to snatch Lord Stanley again.
He just can’t be
“I thought his series was OK,” Avs coach Jared Bednar said of Necas’ performance versus the Kings. “You know, I thought he was committed on the defensive side. He didn’t make any glaring mistakes (that) led to goals against or high-danger scoring chances against.
“So he was a committed guy, and he worked hard. He’s got to get a little harder, I think, as the playoffs go on. I think there’s a group of guys in our room that have to do more and can get a little harder to play against in different areas.
“But I will say that, No. 1, commitment, work ethic — that stuff was there. I think they can impact the power play a little bit more by some better decisions and whatnot.”
One of the luxuries of playing the Kings first was that everything felt like a tune-up. A wade into Cup waters to get used to postseason physicality, postseason grit, postseason checking, postseason calls (or lack thereof), postseason pace, postseason adjustments, and postseason special teams.
The Avs could play with their food on the power play until 2036 and still beat Los Angeles nine out of 10 times. The Wild, though, are a different beast.
Dallas scored 10 of its 15 goals with the extra man, landing six more power-play scores than Minnesota while going down in six games in the first round. One PP goal won’t win this series when the margins are this narrow just about everywhere else on the ice.
“And we saw (Necas) kind of break out in Game 4 a little bit offensively,” Bednar added. “So it took a couple games to figure that out. That timeline’s got to get shorter — learning more about your opponent … game by game, period by period, to try and break through.”
With the Avs rested and Minnesota surging, the second round also offers Necas a chance to either slay several dragons at once — if his blade’s sharp.
The first is the whisper that Marty’s game, with its speed and grace in open space, doesn’t translate to the playoffs the way, say, Logan O’Connor, Artturi Lehkonen, Nicolas Roy and (a healthy) Nazem Kadri do.
Few skaters in the Avs locker room can be as pretty with the stick as Necas at full tilt. But this is a time of year when the ability to stab, chop, push, and shovel your way to ugly goals means even more.
Meanwhile, the man he replaced, Mikko Rantanen, has put up 15 points with the extra skater in the playoffs during that same span. Not that anyone’s counting, mind you.
Of course, a decent showing against Minnesota in the biggest series of the Cup’s second round would only toss more dirt on a grave that Mikko has been digging these last few days in Dallas.
The Wild cooked Moose’s goose before the Avs could get the chance. (eight years at $12 million per season) is now being weighed in Big D the way Jamal Murray’s and Christian Braun’s deals are being scrutinized here — and for the same reason.
In the first round, Mikko scored once, logged six helpers and put up seven points in six games with a negative-8 plus/minus. The cherry on top: The NHL fined Moose $5,000 Friday morning for a cross-check on Minnesota’s Kirill Kaprizov to take with him to Cancun.
“Yeah, I don’t really pay attention to those (comparisons to Rantanen),” Necas told me. “But obviously, people are going to make those. I’m just here to do my best. And to help this team.”
No time like the present. If pressure’s a privilege, so is a parade.
