Avalanche offense stonewalled by Arizona blocks with contrasting styles in Game 3 loss

The Avalanche got burned Sat­ur­day in a game they dom­i­nat­ed, syn­the­siz­ing what makes play­ing the Coy­otes so frustrating.

Col­orado ham­mered the Ari­zona net — 51 shots on goal­tender Dar­cy Kuem­per — but had 27 shots blocked and few clean looks. Ari­zona man­aged only 23 shots on goal, but also got two late emp­ty-net goals that were the direct result of grit and effort.

The con­trast in play­ing styles result­ed in a Game 3 win, 4–2, for the wily Coyotes.

“It def­i­nite­ly speaks to Arizona’s grit­ti­ness, the way they’re play­ing, the com­mit­ment and sac­ri­fice that they have in their lock­er room,” Avalanche coach Jared Bed­nar said. “They’re get­ting into shoot­ing lanes all over the place. We spent quite a bit of time in the offen­sive zone shoot­ing pucks, play­ing hard and doing a lot of good things. Some­times you’re going to get a block. … I didn’t think we shot the puck par­tic­u­lar­ly well for the amount of oppor­tu­ni­ties that we had. We prob­a­bly could have done a bet­ter job there.”

Arizona’s suc­cess at stonewalling the Avs wasn’t from a lack of Col­orado try­ing. The Avs con­trolled the offen­sive pace through­out, with 15 third-peri­od shots rep­re­sent­ing some of their best offense all series. That didn’t faze the Coy­otes’ pack-it-in defen­sive strategy.

Ari­zona cen­ter Derek Stepan and defense­man Jason Demers each self-sac­ri­ficed with four blocks apiece.

“I thought we did a real­ly good job of tak­ing away their time and space,” Kuem­per said. “We prob­a­bly spent more time on our end than we want­ed to, but when we defend like that, we give our­selves a chance.”

What’s an Avalanche goal-scor­er to do?

“When you’re cre­at­ing a lot and play­ing in the o‑zone quite a bit, you expect them to put their bod­ies on the line and get into shoot­ing lanes,” Col­orado cap­tain Gabe Lan­deskog said. “I think that’s a part of every team’s game plan to get in front of shots and sac­ri­fice. We’ve just got to find a way to get some shots through and find dif­fer­ent ways and dif­fer­ent angles to attack them.”

Added Col­orado for­ward Mikko Ranta­nen: “Every­body is block­ing shots and it’s not an excuse for us. We have to find a lane and get more traf­fic to the net. Try to make it hard­er on the goalie. He made 50-some­thing saves today. We just have to get in front of him more.”

The Avs will con­tin­ue crack­ing away at the Coy­otes’ defense until the dam final­ly breaks. It also calls for self-reflection.

Arizona’s pair of open-net goals late in the game was the result of Cale Makar get­ting out­worked, albeit, with­out defend­er or goalie help. But Col­orado must exert the same effort show­cased by Arizona’s block­ers, in all facets of the game, to ensure a first-round upset isn’t in the Avs’ future.

“We couldn’t find a way to put enough goals in the back of the net even though we had all those chances,” Bed­nar said.

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