the
hockey mountain higher go to avalanche podcast presented by super books
sports jj jerez air of dean here in ballerina following the three to avalanche
victory in game to here
uh... got to performance right i mean they were really
looking
horrendous in the first period i think for lack of a better term that one yet
and uh... yeah everything was resurrected and everything turned out alright
the volunteers with the game win gold late in the third period air if i think
all of us are really curious about what was said what happened
switch was flipped
there in between the first and second period we can only i guess get
the uh... context clues that were given from the conversations we had the players
that
jared bednar
what do you think was done what happened in between those two periods to really
turn this come back and and turn this game around i talked to several members
of the media here and several members of uh... altitude staff and guys
after the first intermission and everybody we all kind of like
is this team just exhausted are they tired are they heard are they are they
are they just
it's not their year basically is it is it a team that's gas the team that gave
it their own the second forty one games of the season a team that
road mckinnon and ran into hard a team that you know we saw it against
arizona we saw it against anheim we saw multiple times a team that
continuously gave up and coughed up to go leads only to come back in when it
in overtime in the shootout
was this a team that just
didn't have any gas left in the tank
and then they came out in the second period and it looked like that very same
team that won the couple last year obviously missing a couple guys
but the
the aggressive
for check the
amount of opportunities the traffic in front of the net seeing jt comfort
banging bodies in there in archery lekken and getting body slammed by guys
and getting pinned down and getting booze from the crowd in the refuse
suck chance because of how many times
a crack in players sat on top of lekken and ripped his helmet off or just
pinned him to the ice like this guy is so annoying and
everything that we thought in the first intermission
there's no way you can't have no gas left in the tank and then do that
there's no way
so something else had to change and and you know we talked to kal macarra
about it and he said that we had a conversation after the first period and
somebody asked him a very good follow up that
was it a rowdy
pump up type of conversation or was it common he said it was calm
if i can read between the lines on what he said on what jared said he talked about
what he said between the period obviously said the players talked as well
if i could read between the lines i think this is a team that
coming out of game one new they did not play well
and we've been talking about it for the last two days we've been tweeting about
it for the last two days there was no panic in that room because
they knew they could be better it's not like they gave their best effort and got
beaten by this pesky Seattle group
they gave nowhere close to their best effort and said you know what
they gave their best effort we didn't we have more to give they gave us about
as good as they can
and they knew going into this game they had to be better
and i think it kind of got to the point where it's like well of course the
avalanche are gonna come out i think i told you before the game i said
to nothing before the
first commercial break the avalanche will lead because i saw what toronto did i
saw what dallas said and i said this is what the home team does they're gonna
respond in game two
and then i think the first intermission happened and going back to what kal macar
said about that calm conversation
they sat there and they said all right enough is enough
we gotta do this we gotta come out better
there was a word that your better use several times during the post game
presser and you and i saw a tweet that he also apparently said on live tv during
you know uh... in between commercial interview and that's swagger
right he said that they were working on getting their swagger back and
uh... they were
had to chip away at it right slowly but surely they got their swagger
by the end of the game
it was in full swing
i guess air of what does that swagger look like for this team
once they turn that swagger on
what was different than when they had it turned on relentless
it is such a relentless team who are the two guys that scored the goals in the
second period
archery lekon and valentice ken
valent mini val
and what i knew you were gonna say that today i have to do it i have to do it
because when you think of the word relentless what two guys do you think of
on this team
valent archery net lekon
also known as mini val
those are the guys it's a relentless attack valentice ken
when you think of swagger i think of valentice ken's newfound confidence this
year where every time he scores he has to do that point that yep we're gonna
rile up the crowd with a celebration he did an air zone on the road he did it at
home here to get the crowd going
that confidence he has in his celebrations now
when i think of relentless i think of a five eleven hundred eighty some pounds
if he's even a hundred eighty i think he's one seventy six is what he's listed
at archery lekon
in the crease banging away at the puck and
like i said a couple minutes ago just pissing off all the defenders like who
is this guy in wisie in our kitchen
jamey elixir act will borgon
uh... just big bodies on that blue line adam larson
so that's what i think of i think of a relentless attack from the avalanche and
when you think relentless with this team you think the two guys that scored the
goals that made it to the two
yeah i just i'm impressed by the resilience of this group to yes they were
relentless but they're also resilient they could have had every reason to
fold up and say uh... tonight's not our night either let's go to c atl and
bring this thing back to to
uh... but no they they found
the way to win and they dug deep and said you know what we have the heart of
champions we we are the reigning champion of the n h l let's go out there and show
it let's go out there and prove that we are still
uh... forced to be reckoned with it within this league so
um... yeah just good stuff
really you know as abs fans i'm sure a lot of people are really proud of what
they watch tonight
yeah absolutely and it helped to be able to
have more than one line clicking
and it goes to mikorin and mikin and not playing together it goes to another
underrated movie even though it's eight minutes of hockey
having darren helman said a band buyers being able to have a darren helms center
the fourth line because without helm
jared bedner plugged in andro kagliano as a center something he hasn't played
since his days with the oilers i believe
and then kagliano gets hurt
he doesn't want to play benn iris as a center in the playoffs so then you got
to take new hook off the malg in an alert line which not that new hook malg in
an alert we're even good in game to i think that line is struggling big time
uh... and you need both other and malg in a step up for them to be better
taking new hook off that line and putting benn iris with malg in an error
is not a good luck
that's your third line just does not look
good it's that trade deadline acquisition it's a guy that you picked up
for scraps from toronto that ended up being a pleasant surprise
and a kid from the a child that probably shouldn't be playing the playoffs this
year hasn't developed that level yet so
just getting darren helman back and having him secure a fourth line with
niella no conner waiting for kagliano to be able to reunite that fourth line
from last year that glorious checking veteran line with logan o'conner
and then being able to put new hook back on the third line
helps just as much as it does to do what jared did in the top two lines and
switch things up
yeah let's get let's have into those top two lines a little bit because
like you mentioned val and archery like in the difference makers and playing on
separate lines tonight so
just just the presence that are to relaken in i mean we we talked about
after game one so
naturally gird bennard said yeah
you guys are talking about higher pretty smart you're right at our to
like an employee to great game i'm going to bump him up to the first line
you and i also discuss after game one the difficulty the avalanche had
digging pucks out of the corner
tonight that problem i wouldn't say it was solved but relentless
they did it a little bit better too man he's he's so great at it and
you know i asked jared about the decision to go with lecken in ahead of
nichushkin and
it was twofold number one you know he said exactly what we said last game
that leckenin just had a great game in the chushkin didn't it seemed like
leckenin was the guy that needed to get that promotion to play with a center
like mckinnon and then he also mentioned a good point number one
you know when when mckinnon returned from his injury i think i have the timeline
correct in my head when mckinnon returned from his injury on new year's
eve miko had spent the last several weeks between that december 6th
injury and that december 31st return he had spent the last several weeks
kind of driving his own line something they didn't see much of last year because
he always played with with naz or with nate
and coming back out of that jared said why would i put him back together let's
have miko drive his own line and nate drive his own line this is before the
nieto acquisition this is before elor before jack jonston this is when they
have before malgan or right around malgan like they don't have a lot of
depth in their forward group so if i remember correctly it was leckinin
mckinnon rodriguez and comfor was playing with ryanin and and
i want to say in a chushkin but he was hurt a lot so was whoever the hell
plug and play i think mattney etl played there at some point
to jesus this team man um so that was that was the first part it was twofold
that was the first part was that leckinin had a much better game one the
second one was leckinin mckinnon have played a lot together not that valin
nate have it but leckinin and mckinnon without miko
have kind of been a formidable pair and i love that he threw in that extra bit
that something that i didn't realize or not didn't realize but didn't really
click in my mind is comfor and the chushkin kill penalties together
they're formidable pair on the pk and to have them together at even strength
with oh i don't know a 55 goal score on the other wing
not a bad line of half let's look at miko ranson a little bit just not
playing to the level of miko ranson and of the regular season so far through two
games only really made his two shots on goal
um yeah just it's kind of went unnoticed tonight right i mean the the
the times i did notice him it seemed like it was
for the wrong reasons he did not have a good game too
game one i don't want to say that he stuck out in a bad way because he kind of
was just lumped in with the rest of the team the guy that stuck out in a bad way
in game one was joshman's um you noticed him the rustiness the two
penalties and then the devon tapes turn over you noticed him kind of stick out
in a bad way miko i wouldn't say stuck out in a bad way
more than the rest of the team but tonight he did and in game one he even scored
i mean it was a nice goal and you know we saw him kind of struggle today and
given the way that you saw somebody like devon taves and valentice can for that
matter guys like that bounce back from a tough game one
you're hoping to see that out of miko ranton and and what i love about this
team is they've done it time and time again this year
when they sink when they lose they find a way to bounce back when guys have
tough stretches they find a way to bounce back and they usually do it
on the road and this is going to be a massive game three
the first ever playoff game in the seattle kraken's history
it's going to be a rowdy crowd it's going to be a tough crowd but this is a
team in the avalanche that one 29 i want to say road games
well really 28 because one wasn't fennland it's a neutral site game but
28 games in road buildings around the nhl one of them being the one game they
played in seattle on the second of a back-to-back
that's the type of game where someone like mikko ranton can bounce back
you know this morning at morning skate i was watching the seattle kraken do their
morning skate and they had a lot of
looseness to their to their skate right a lot of looseness to their energy they
were all chatting cracking jokes smiling having fun
a good energy where crack the crack in the crack in jokes yes
yes um and of course look at look from a seattle kraken perspective you come
into colorado you win game one you're feeling good about yourself
you come into game two you're up to nothing in the first period
and then the avalanche start to come back i think that's where you really
start to plant a lot of doubt in the seattle kraken's head
once it was two two i think the kraken are taken back they're on their
heels saying oh these guys are on their way
these guys are building momentum and they are uh we're starting to see the
avalanche of old i think that plant that seed of doubt is still planted
heading into game three in the avalanche by winning game three can really i think
crush the spirits of the seattle kraken what's our favorite gift from that lake
tahoe game a little more than two years ago oh boy oh boy
it's nathan mikkinen grabbing the puck galloping up the ice
and alix patrangelo a stanley cup champion
skating backwards one of the best defensemen in the league and saying
oh boy and that's what happened in the seattle kraken today they kind of had
that feeling uh okay this is what we thought we were
gonna get we were playing with house money and it
worked and we were like hey we have some confidence like we can
actually do this like colombus once swept a 62 win tampa bay
lightning to win their first series in franchise history like
20 some years after becoming an expansion team almost 20 years
um actually yeah 18 years after becoming a uh an expansion team
why can't we do that to the defending cup champs
they started to get that confidence because it went from a team playing with
house money to holy shit we can actually do this
and then the period flipped from the first to the second of game two
and it became oh boy yeah well said well said um thank you i
try yeah definitely fear placed in the hearts of seattle kraken no matter what
they say don't listen to any reports that come out in the next couple days
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gambling problem call one eight hundred four set five two two four seven
zero zero um erif we talked about the jumbling of the
forward lines we talked about how josh manson was
under a microscope as having a tough game in game one
of course i think that led gird benard to scramble up the defensive pairings
a little bit what do you think of what he did with the defensive guys tonight
this is going to sound hilarious because i made a joke about this
somewhere during the game i think it was when they were trailing two to nothing
but that third pair needs jack johnson the joke that i made during the game
was the jack johnson injury ended the avalanches run at defending the champ
the championship which obviously is a joke but
that third pair needs him because jack ended the season it sounds hilarious to
say it out loud he ended the season on such a high note
and he was playing some of the best hockey actually full stop jack johnson was
playing the best hockey we've seen him play as a member of the avalanche shut
down defense shut down defense calming presence
and right now on the third pair you have eric johnson who's
lost a step or two is the nice way of putting it hasn't looked his best
especially in the playoffs but you saw it in the late in the regular season two
which is why before that late switch that happened
from jack to eric after the warm-ups of game one
that jared bedner was entertaining the idea and basically did
scratch eric johnson for jack johnson and then the second guy on there is
jat is uh josh manson who
ah man it's it's tough he's when he came back from his first injury in that game
in minnesota he was unbelievable the best game he's played with with the
avalanche since he was acquired and jared bedner said that himself
this time around something is off in the second period he played well he was in
the offensive zone he was he was in us like he had two or three good scoring
opportunities he was throwing his body around doing that josh manson thing
also took a bad penalty his third minor of the series
but you know after playing only 1048 last game he played 12 11 tonight and
him and eric are kind of struggling together at five on five
so i think getting jack in there with josh manson until josh finds his
footing and you can throw him back into the top four
would be nice if you even throw him into the top four because what you have
right now is a couple of righties and kiln macarne bone by arm playing
together and a couple of lefties in sam drard and devon taves playing
together and i asked jared about this as well and
i asked jared a question about bairam but i called bairam bednar when talking to
bednar about bairam it was great i said what you know what was the decision
in playing bednar second hand embarrassment second hand
embarrassment for the entire president shout out me i hope you know they brought
in the mics now so if that was broadcasted on the sp and everybody heard air's
voice calling bairam bednar when talking to bed hey
hey bednar what did you think of playing bednar with macar is basically how the
question went um but those two guys have great chemistry
bow and bairam is a stud he's an all-star in this game and he reminds me of the
surrogate chev to tampa base headman is what you see with with with bow and
bairam to the avalanches kel macar he's a star in the making himself
and then devon taves and sam drard i can't stress this enough
especially with what we've seen from josh manson in these two games
the resurgence of sam you old drard since new year's day 2023
both offensively and defensively and a new kicker
physically cannot be understated and i'm not just doing this to try to
stick one to all the drard haters he has been unbelievable
and him and devon taves i forget who tweeted me and i should probably pull up
the tweet but i don't have the time right now
somebody tweeted me to remind me this drard and taves were one of the top
10 best deep herrings in that 21 season analytically because they played
together because macar was still playing with ryan graves at the time
putting them two back together a couple of lefties at feed off each other
has been exceptional and it was something that jared mentioned that
them two played a lot together when macar was injured this year
and that was something that good that came from the macar injury
yeah i mean the bow and bairam and kel macar combined for 12 of the avalanche
41 shots and each walk away with an assist and then of course
devon taves with a goal and an assist and same drard not on the score sheet but
he made a lot of good defensive plays tonight he was genuinely
subtle poke checks just the he had an assist
just same drard did yeah you're looking at the wrong sheet
he's right yep he hadn't assessed how they must have changed it yeah they
updated it after yep so he hadn't assessed he was plus two and i
believe there you go three hits three hits for
beautiful little sammy beautiful stuff yeah i mean and again the defensive
plays just those little poke checks right such same drard
defense not not gonna wow you he's not gonna lay a huge hit on anybody but he
will have a really good active stick and that's what you saw and you saw it out
of all four of those guys and yeah if we can inch eric johnson and josh manson
to a little bit more confidence i mean you you're going to be back at a formidable
six but we'll see how those get managed throughout the rest of the series and
josh manson is a great player like the fact that and and i'm not by any means
like disrespecting eric johnson he needs to be playing with somebody that can
carry the pairing and josh manson is too rusty to do that right now
once josh manson can carry the pairing and eat up some of those minutes
eric can start to rely on josh and you know you hope that that's what could
end up happening unless you play jack instead but
having drard and taves together is just such an underrated pairing
and obviously bow and byrum is a stud we've been talking about him for years
we talk about him privately all the time that guy should be playing top line
minutes you know and and if things don't work if things end up
you know down the line you need to make another change well guess what you put
seven back with eight and you let them do their thing because you know that's an
incredible pairing arguably hell the best pairing in the NHL not even
arguably so you have a lot of options now and you just need that
josh manson guy to be the josh manson that we saw in the second period start to
get his feet wet a little bit have some confidence because we're
two games into the first round series and josh manson has played in those two
games just over 23 minutes like you can have a game where josh manson
plays 23 minutes in that night alone he's got 23 minutes in two games
yeah we've talked over and over in the past how important
the defensive point production is for this avalanche structure i mean without
the defensive yep guys doing anything the avalanche
forwards suffer and have a hard time scoring goals and real quick
lekkenin from macar and bairam nichushkin from rod regas and devan
taves game winning goal devan taves from lekkenin and samuel
jorar so you got two there for taves you got one for macar one for bairam one
for jorar those are your four of your six the top four those are the guys
um another big thing i think that really won the avalanche the game tonight was
face-offs i know that's weird to say coming from the colorado avalanche they
won 55% of the face-offs but really seem to have won the big ones that
mattered right i mean they definitely had one that led to a
goal off a set face-off play but nathan mckinnon
winning 12 of 20 face-offs today we love that we love to see that
anytime you can see mckinnon get his confidence back in the face-off circle
and have 20 face-offs which leads the which leads not the nh-el which leads
to the team is a great thing to have anytime you can see
and i think what what happens there is once you take ryanin off of his wing
and take away that safety net of a guy that can take those draws and put them
with lekkenin rodriguez that basically says hey nate you got to take these you
got to win them i mean evan rodriguez did take one face-off it was probably
when somebody was kicked out but that's when you got to rely on mckinnon when
he doesn't have his ryanin safety net and his usual land-as-gogh safety net you
got to throw him out there and it was nice to see him respond yeah very nice
his big wins it's a frustrating area i will say
real quick about nathan mckinnon and mikorayannan
zero points from both of them i listened to a lot of radio shows a lot of
podcasts a lot of national media and the things that they all talked about i
mentioned the miers eler malgend line earlier
and that's what a lot of people talked about wise
you know we talked all regular season about the avalanche but
then we saw their lines in game one and we said
mckinnon ryanin rodriguez cool and then you look at the bottom three lines and
you're like whoa their depth is suffering and then you know they started to realize
no burikoski no land-as-gogh no cadre
this is a game where mckinnon and ryanin
nothing goose eggs and points but lachenin stuck up step up
rodriguez stepped up nichew schin stepped up those are the other three guys in your
top six jt comfort didn't have a point but the defense stepped up that's what
you want to see from this team you can't always
rely on 29 and 96 they'll give you a lot of games they'll carry you
if you need 16 wins to to win the Stanley cup what you do
you can rely on 29 and 96 to carry you for half of those for 10 of those
but you need other guys to step up and today it was
val and mini val got i hate you three stars of the night
you know to your point star number three val and the chuchkin star number two
archery lectern star number one devante's nathan mckinnon and mik
in and mikl ryan ranten off of that list also off of that list notably in my
opinion is the guy that won the game for you
alexander gorgib his performance tonight was stellar i mean yes the two goals
not his fault by any means sure maybe he'd like to have him back whatever
but the way he was able to shut the door from there on out
and not only that in very dangerous and good opportunities from seattle he kept
them away and kept the avalanche alive kept
the momentum going in the avalanche's favor and without him tonight and
without his performance the avalanche wouldn't have been able to pull this
off i had a really good question for him and i didn't get a chance to talk to
well actually you tell me if this is a really good question but i genuinely
feel like because what did we say about your giving game one
he didn't lose them the game but he also didn't make any like
wow saves and then what did we see in the first period
he didn't lose them the period but again he didn't make any big wow saves
my question to your give was going to be something along the lines of
when the team started to come out strong in the second period and got the first
goal in that forty-six seconds. How does it feel? 46 seconds later got the
those are my least favorite questions and i've asked them before and i hate it
how does it feel to tie the game up what do you
fucking thing well i hated it sucks the score made me nauseous
yeah just terrible hate it never again but yeah so my question to him was going
to be something along the lines of the team gets one they get a second one it
is now two to two were you able to feed off of that to say
they're finally waking up let me wake up because we didn't see giorgi have
make those big stellar saves until after that except for
the one late in the first period the one that could have made a three to
nothing but outside of that he didn't make a lot of
great a like ten bell saves as they say about goalies
until after the avalanche got that first goal that second
yumi and jesse montano what were we saying it was two to two we said giorgi
have got to shut it down the avalanche of awoken their
goalie needs to start making those big saves and steal something for you
and you saw it you saw it on on the pk that i referenced you saw it on the
three on one on jordan eberly in the third period we got some gorgi
chance or georgi chance or gorgi knows a mix of the two gorgi
eighteen thousand people nobody knows whether to say gorgi
georgi and then if you've been to bed and i've heard him lately call him gorgi
gorgi yeah if you listen if you listen closely if you want to hear gorgi
you'll hear gorgi if you want to hear gorgi you'll hear gorgi because
half of these eighteen thousand people were saying gah and the other were saying
jah whatever the hell you want to call him he was stellar
absolutely fantastic stuff at i xander gorgiiv
and uh i guess the last thing i wanted to talk about was it felt like
maybe the momentum shift the x factor of the night
when kale macar bats talk over the glass the fan catches it the building goes
wild and the night turns around what it was that was so fun that was just
hilarious there's the uh account if you guys aren't following it please do it's
hockey daily 365 at hockey daily 365 i should say
one of the last remaining people on twitter with a blue check mark
um and that's understandable they got to post long videos
but uh he actually posted that how the crowd went wild and the fan was so
happy to catch that puck that macar deflected up over over the glass
which by the way that was a big play by macar because if you remember that
public was pinching had he not they were going
he was they were gonna go two on oh two on one yep it was going to be a
clear opportunity and the game was still two nothing here
macar pinched and then saved his own bacon by
batting that puck and it went right over the the fan caught it and just kind of
gave some fist bumps to the crowd and then the daily 365 account not only
posted it so you can go back and look at their feet and find the video where he
said here's a very happy fan catching a puck
but he came back later and quote tweeted it when it was two to two and said was
this the tsn turning point and it it's it's just a funny joke to make
buy it i missed that the crowd the crowd needed
something to get riled up for and i said it to you before it was
before the avalanche scored a goal i've waited 82 games for playoff energy
and i get to have it it showed up tonight that guy
kind of got to go the avalanche fed off of that guy catching the puck
kill macar deflected by lekkin in two to two and and then the rest is history
shout out to that guy if you're out there yeah pat yourself on the back
unless you're also leaf blower guy then we got we got to call it and we got to go
we got a fight um yeah that'll be all for tonight i guess uh
outstanding stuff from the avalanche i mean just being resilient showing
what true champions are made of being able to dig themselves out of
adversity and pick themselves up by the bootstraps and get it done
amazing stuff yeah we don't we don't know how long this run is gonna last all we
know is i'm gonna say the same thing i've said on the last three four
episodes what they did last year it's not
supposed to be that easy it really truly genuinely isn't supposed to be
that easy the tempe lightnings want to cut the tempe lightening want two cups
and in both of them they had to play a seven-game series against the frickin
new york islanders so it's not supposed to be that easy
that was one 15 more to go we'll see if they can get there but it all starts in
seattle for game three i have a flight to catch tomorrow and saturday's game three
monday's game four tuesday we're back here wednesday's game five that's a
guarantee for sure we'll see where it goes from there
absolutely so yeah follow erif and all this coverage from seattle we'll
definitely be doing a post gamer there as well and then
you want to tease sunday we might be having an old friend on the show
and uh we'll just leave it at that lives in seattle now
well that was a pretty big hint um yeah so thanks for hanging out with us today
after this game three edition of the podcast from ballerina don't forget to
check out superbook sports if you made it this far in the podcast
bless you pretty little heart let's make hockey for everyone
we out here
you