Avalanche find spark, even Western 1st Round with Game 2 win

Defending Cup champs able to relax after slow start, rally with 3 straight goals against Kraken

DENVER -- The Colorado Avalanche are the defending Stanley Cup champions. You might not think they would need to calm down and relax, not early in the Western Conference First Round, not against a second-year expansion team making its debut in the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

But they're human, and the Seattle Kraken are legit. And so, it took a psychological shift for the Avalanche to win 3-2 in Game 2 at Ball Arena on Thursday, coming back from a 2-0 deficit to tie the best-of-7 series.

"Confidence is a … I mean, it's a strange thing," Avalanche coach Jared Bednar said, explaining that things aren't as magnified in the regular season and that no one puts more pressure on the players than they do on themselves. "They want to win, and they put a lot of hard work into winning, so when they're not playing well, it gets frustrating. So that's the mental grind of the playoffs, right?"

The Avalanche didn't play well in a 3-1 loss in Game 1 on Tuesday. They changed all four forward lines and their top two defense pairs for Game 2, most notably splitting top forwards Nathan MacKinnon and Mikko Rantanen and top defensemen Cale Makar and Devon Toews.

And then they didn't play well in the first period of Game 2, falling behind 2-0. Unintimidated, playing free with no expectations and nothing to lose as the underdogs, the Kraken outworked, outskated and outplayed the Avalanche all over the ice.

Bednar said the first period was terrible, Colorado's worst period of the series. The Avalanche played tight. No one wanted the puck. No one wanted to skate with it.

"It was like we were shocked, and we weren't in the right place mentally," Bednar said.

Why?

"I think Game 1 didn't go the way we wanted to, and then Game 2, I think we expected to come out flying and for things to go our way, and they didn't," Avalanche forward Evan Rodrigues said. "They got two quick ones. I don't know if it's frustration or it was just … I think everyone got tense with it."

Rodrigues said Bednar and the leaders spoke in the locker room during the first intermission.

"It was kind of just, 'Guys, relax. Regroup. Take a deep breath. Start going north,'" Rodrigues said.

The Avalanche got off to a better start in the second period. Then MacKinnon won an offensive-zone face-off, drawing the puck back to the right point. Defenseman Bowen Byram passed it to his left, and Makar blasted a slap shot. Forward Artturi Lehkonen deflected it past goalie Philipp Grubauer to cut the Kraken's lead to 2-1 at 6:42.

"The first goal, you could just see the kind of relief from the team, and then everybody just starts buzzing after that," Makar said. "Sometimes you just need a little bit of a spark to light the tank."

Forward Valeri Nichushkin tied it 2-2 just 48 seconds later. Toews took advantage of a Seattle line change and sent a stretch pass up the ice. Rodrigues backhanded it ahead for Nichushkin, who deked Grubauer and ignited the building. Ball Arena roared.

The Kraken pushed late in the second. Avalanche goalie Alexandar Georgiev had to stretch to his right to stop Kraken forward Jordan Eberle with his right pad to foil a 3-on-1 with about 35 seconds to go. But Colorado dominated the final two periods. Toews scored the winner at 12:59 of the third when he buried a rebound.

"We calmed down," Rodrigues said. "We took a deep breath. We have so much talent, and our [defensemen] are so poised with the puck. We were just kind of getting rid of it all the way up the ice from our [defensive] zone to our [offensive] zone, and I think once we start playing faster, going north, making plays, that's when we have success."

Asked why it took four periods for the Avalanche to find their game, Toews said, "I don't know. Sometimes it's tough. They're in the playoffs for a reason. They're a great team over there. They work hard. They make it tough for us to break the puck out, tough for us to get in on the forecheck and create room. So it's up to us to get engaged and find that time and space."

This is just the beginning. Game 3 will be at Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle on Saturday (10 p.m. ET; TBS, SN, TVAS, ROOT-NW, ALT), the Kraken's first home playoff game. The crowd is going to be crazy.

If you're the Kraken, you still have no expectations, nothing to lose as the underdogs. You need to play the same way you did the first four periods of the series. If you're the Avalanche, you have to stay calm, take another deep breath and -- believe it or not -- believe.

"We just tried to relax a little bit and just play together," Toews said. "Belief is something that we're big on in this room, believing in each other, believing in ourselves. We just kind of addressed that and moved on and got to work."