Smashedville: Avs put up another touchdown, survive without Kuemper

The Colorado Avalanche erupted for four power-play goals Saturday to take game 3 in Nashville 7-3,

Colorado took advantage of the Predators ‘ mistakes despite losing starting goaltender Darcy Kuemper and a two-goal lead. Rookie goalie Connor Ingram finally cooled off after nearly stealing game 2, even handing the Avs an easy goal off of a misplay. Gabriel Landeskog paced his team with two goals and two assists, coming just one point shy of the franchise record of five in a postseason game.

“In the playoffs in general, it’s super important with your special teams, and on the road, it’s very important for us,” Landeskog said. “I think we first two games were able to find some looks, and it will look at the video this morning and see kind of where we can stay ahead of their adjustments.”

It was just Landeskog’s third game since coming back from an injury that kept him out most of March and all of April.

“In the playoffs, you’re not thinking about how much time you missed or how rusty you might be or whatever,” Landeskog said. “You’re just trying to get into it and get involved right away. And for me, that’s moving my feet and skating and playing physical.”

The game’s biggest story was Kuemper leaving early after taking a stray Ryan Johansen stick to the face. The Predators forward somehow got his stick in between the bars of Kuemper’s mask, and he quickly flailed down in pain. The Avs starting goalie went straight to the locker room and was replaced by Pavel Francouz. Head coach Jared Bednar said the injury was to Kuemper’s eye but it’s not too serious. Bednar expects to see Kuemper back in the net at some point and is even hopeful that he’ll be able to go for game 4.

Kuemper had a similar indecent in 2019, in which a stick scarily got into his mask and he left the ice quickly. The goalie didn’t seem to be in as much pain as he was on Saturday. Kuemper played in the Coyotes’ next game after the prior incident, making 37 saves.

“I didn’t even know that something like this could happen until today,” Francouz said. “I have never seen such an injury, and it’s obviously scary that the stick can fit, but I think it’s a really small chance something like this can happen.”

Francouz struggled for momnets, but it didn’t matter too much, as the Avs answered within five minutes of each Preds goal. Both goals the backup did allow were on the powerplay, but one was relatively soft.

“They were trying to like show me that they trust me and support me in the first intermission,” Francouz said. “And most of all, they supported me on the ice because every time they scored, we scored right away. So that’s, that’s awesome, if you have such a good team that you have to lead right away back so that that really helped us for sure.”

“If Frankie’s our goalie, he’s our goalie. He played stellar for us tonight coming in; that’s a tough situation to come into,” Devon Toews said. “We’re hopeful on Kemps for sure but if Frankie’s our guy, we’re ready to go to battle for him.”

Six of the game’s nine goals came with a man-up, the Avs scoring four that way. The powerplay simply punished Nashville.

“We finished tonight. I like the chances we created the other,” Bednar said. “A good attack mentality again and just sort of taking what they gave us and weren’t afraid to put the puck to the net go there.”

The Avs can move to the next round with a win on Monday, the boys in Burgundy have not trailed for a single second in the series.

“There are no easy games in the playoffs,” Toews said. “They’ve got their backs against the wall at home, they definitely don’t want to get swept at home, and we want to try to end this thing and don’t give them any life.”

All-time, teams that take a 3-0 lead in a NHL best-of-seven series hold a series record of 196-4.

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