Too little, too Nate.
“I’m worried, to an extent,” Avalanche fan Jesse Klus confided as we’d huddled at the glass in front of Ball Arena’s Section 140, less than hour before Colorado got jumped by Vegas, 4-2, in Game 1 of the Western Conference Final. “But I have faith. We have a team where if one guy goes down, it’s the next-man-up mentality.”
The next men turned up. Kind of. But none of that adds up to squat if the Avs’ leading men take two-and-a-half periods to get their
“We just weren’t sharp,” Avalanche star Nathan MacKinnon reflected later. “Execution was poor from everybody. Yeah, just gotta be sharper than that.”
Especially when you’re already rolling onto the ice a legend short. In the Avalanche’s first postseason game without defenseman Cale Makar since 2023, Colorado’s other pillars were MIA until the final 5 minutes.
By the time vintage Nate Dogg joined the party, the Avs trailed 3-1 and burgundy and blue faithful were streaming into the aisles.
With 2:20 left, No. 29 spun his defender into a soft pretzel at the right post and fed a cutting Gabriel Landeskog to get the Avs to within a goal. Only a Vegas empty-netter dashed any dreams of a repeat of Minnesota Game 5, and welcome to life behind the 8-ball.
With no Cale, the Avs paled. They passed too much. They got passive. The shooting was lousy, the puck management was spotty, the back checks were inconsistent. The top two lines vanished, forcing coach Jared Bednar to mix and match on the fly.
The Golden Knights’ strategy was simple — get a one-goal lead and park the bus. So why the heck did Colorado oblige them? Over the middle 40 minutes of regulation, the Avs looked flatter than the top of the Grand Mesa. It was if Vegas knew the series started Wednesday and MacKinnon & Company were waiting ’til Friday’s Game 2 to turn the engine over.
“No. 1, you can’t baby the puck around the ice,” Bednar said. “The slower your pass goes to the open man, the quicker (the defense is) going to get out there. I felt like there were opportunities to make earlier, quicker decisions. zip the puck hard.”
The Golden Knights had better juice, better coaching, better goaltending, better special teams and a better plan. They also better utilized the dark arts of playoff hockey, winking their way into some friendly calls.
Somebody needs to give Vegas’ Rasmus Andersson an Oscar, by the way. Best Dive In a Conference Final.
With six minutes left in the second period, Rose Colton pushed Andersson out of the Vegas crease, and the Golden Knights defender went to the ice with, shall we say, more than a little drama.
A flop is a flop is a flop. It worked, getting Colton a roughing call and Vegas an extra man.
Which immediately paid off. The Golden Knights put a second goal on the board when Vegas winger Mitch Marner wrapped a pass behind his back to teammate Pavel Dorofeyev just before Logan O’Connor sent him into the boards. Dorofeyev lost Brent Burns in front of the Colorado net and Scott Wedgewood lost the puck, as a point-blank wrister pushed the Golden Knights’ lead to 2-0 and pushed Ball Arena’s collective blood pressure up about 30 points.
Midway through the third period, Vegas had two goals and an assist from its first and second lines. The Avs had goose eggs.
“(It’s) impossible to replace Makar, of course,” ESPN analyst Ray Ferraro warned me prior to the puck drop. “But if we’re talking one game, that’s survivable.
“I certainly think if (Makar is) out longer-term, or the bulk of this series, it would be a huge advantage, of course, for Vegas. This feels like a massive opportunity for Vegas (Wednesday).”
They took it. The Avs made Vegas goalie Carter Hart work for it in the second period, outshooting the visitors 6-1 in the first 6 minutes of the stanza. But if Hart wasn’t pulling a puck out of the air, a Golden Knight was beating Colorado attackers to loose biscuits in front of the crease, then sweeping them out of danger.
Avs D-man Sam Malinsky isn’t Makar, but who is? Without Cale, it was hard not to miss a presence that’s usually everywhere on the ice — defense, power play, penalty kill, the works.
But it was felt the most on Wednesday at the blue line in the offensive zone. When Vegas didn’t have a generational sniper to worry about, they could pack the slot and the crease the way NBA defenses could collapse on Nikola Jokic in the paint.
And nobody could beat Hart from distance, or even set up a friendly tip, over the first 40 minutes. O’Connor came the closest, but his wrister 5:11 into the contest doinked hard off the left post.
“NO MEANS NO!” Avs fans chanted at Hart, the nimble net-minder with the unsavory backstory.
“NO MEANS NO!”
“NO MEANS NO!”
“NO MEANS NO!”
Yet it was Hart, to the chagrin of a packed Ball and most of America, who controlled the crease and the grease from the jump. It felt a lot like the Kings series, only against bigger bodies, tighter checks and quicker sticks.
The Avs and Golden Knights both fired off 10 shots apiece in a scoreless opening stanza, as the hosts forced more Vegas giveaways (10) while the Fightin’ Torts racked up six blocked shots. At least two or three Vegas defenders seemed form a protective wall in front of Hart whenever the Avs sent the cavalry.
Before Wednesday night, the Avs had only played one postseason game since 2020 without Makar. That was in 2023, Game 5 of that ill-fated Seattle first-round series at Ball Arena, when the Colorado D-man was suspended for an interference penalty earlier in the series. The Kraken held on for a 3-2 win and would win the series in Denver four days later.
Nobody asked for a sequel. Jesse least of all.
Klus is 33. He’s been an Avs fan for 26 years, rooting from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, some 971 miles north of Chopper Circle. Jesse flew in Wednesday morning, dropping $1200 in Canadian dollars on airfare and $700 for Wednesday’s ticket.
Daughter Braeleigh digs Cale even more than Jesse does. She even gave him a bracelet with “MAKAR” spelled in tiny beads last November in Vancouver, outside the Avs’ hotel.
‘I’ll trade you a bracelet for a jersey,” Makar told her. He pulled out a white No. 8 sweater, signed it and handed it over.
“(The Avs) kind of went up and down like waves,” Jesse said of Game 1. “When we had the momentum, we were all over it. Then it dropped off for a while, then back up.”
And your faith?
“Still heavy,” Klus said. “But the effort needs to come heavy like they did in the first period — hard, fast, ready to compete. Thirty-eight shots isn’t bad. But we could’ve had plenty more. And hope to goodness’ sake Cale comes back.”
Amen. Sometimes, it’s just not your Knight. But if you don’t get some juice from the big boys, and fast, it won’t be your series, either.
