Kiszla: After bitter playoff exit, why Nathan MacKinnon is wrong to think Avs can stand pat and win Stanley Cup

Wear­ing the 1,000-yard stare of a defeat­ed man, Nathan MacK­in­non refused to budge from the Avalanche bench as anoth­er sea­son end­ed with him no clos­er to hoist­ing the Stan­ley Cup.

The world’s best hock­ey play­er ed team­mates sur­ren­der the lead three times before los­ing 5–4 in over­time against Dal­las. Force-fed anoth­er bit­ter Game 7 pill to choke down, Kid MacK sat stone cold, pro­cess­ing the loss, his eyes rag­ing with 1,000 what-ifs and 1,000 regrets that lin­gered after the sud­den death of a cham­pi­onship dream.

“In terms of assess­ing our team, I don’t think we should change any­thing,” MacK­in­non insist­ed Fri­day, moments after the Avs were bounced from the NHL bub­ble far soon­er than they expect­ed. “If we have the exact same team next year, I think we can win it next year.”

Sor­ry, Kid. But this old dog respect­ful­ly dis­agrees with your assessment.

Col­orado can’t win a cham­pi­onship unless Avalanche gen­er­al man­ag­er Joe Sakic gets MacK­in­non more help. And the place to start is between the pipes.

There’s noth­ing wrong with Philipp Grubauer or Pavel Fran­couz, except nei­ther goalie is quite reli­able enough to win the 16 play­off games required to secure a championship.

I admire the faith MacK­in­non, who pro­duced a Gret­zky-esque 25 points in 15 post­sea­son games, showed for his boys in the room, by exhibit­ing grace in defeat.

MacK­in­non is a gen­er­a­tional tal­ent, as wor­thy as Sid­ney Cros­by or Sakic to have his name engraved on the Cup. And that’s pre­cise­ly why this is a tal­ent it would be a cry­ing shame for the Avs to waste.

“We want­ed to win it this year,” right winger Mikko Ranta­nen said. “But it’s too late now.”

In 2020, a year all of us hope to nev­er see any­thing like again, so many sto­ries both great and small are told of per­se­ver­ance, because mere­ly get­ting through it all some­times seems like vic­to­ry enough.

But here’s the rub. In sports, as in life, bid­ing time until next year only invites regret.

Yes, coach Jared Bed­nar was jus­ti­fi­ably proud of a Col­orado team that refused to quit despite los­ing sev­en — count ‘em — sev­en key play­ers to injury, from cap­tain Gabe Lan­deskog to defense­man Erik John­son and both of top its goalies, leav­ing brave third-stringer Michael Hutchin­son to take the loss in Game 7.

But as Bed­nar walked in the dress­ing room after a goal by unlike­ly Dal­las hero Joel Kivi­ran­ta scored 7 min­utes, 24 sec­onds, into over­time against a gassed Col­orado defense, the coach saw the no-excus­es truth.

“We set out at the start of the year with the goal to win the Stan­ley Cup, and we didn’t achieve it,” Bed­nar said.

“We can make any excus­es we want: injuries, this, that or the oth­er. Our goal was our goal. And we didn’t accom­plish it. So it hurts. It (stinks). I looked at our guys’ faces after the game, I could see their disappointment.”

Despite light­ing the lamp with crazy pin­ball action in what will be record­ed as the sixth high­est-scor­ing play­off series in NHL his­to­ry, the Avs were a dis­turbing­ly inept 4‑of-32 on the pow­er play. Even worse: Col­orado sur­ren­dered 28 goals to Dallas

“We just couldn’t keep the puck out of our net this series,” MacK­in­non said.

The good news: MacK is still a Kid. He cel­e­brat­ed his 25th birth­day in the bub­ble Sept. 1.

Sakic did not win the Cup until after his 26th birth­day — and also not until after the Avalanche trad­ed for world-class goalie Patrick Roy.

Get to work, Joe.

In the year when the NHL, like every­thing else in sports and life, has been chal­lenged to the max by COVID-19, the com­ing months will be as unusu­al as the unwel­come four-month hia­tus the league took before build­ing a bub­ble in two Cana­di­an cities to resume play.

“I don’t even know,” MacK­in­non con­fessed, “when next sea­son starts.”

Christ­mas? Maybe. But don’t get your hopes up.

In one impor­tant regard, uncer­tain­ty makes MacK like the rest of us in 2020. He’s truck­ing so hard with every ounce of ener­gy toward tomor­row that look­ing beyond the next twist in the road is out of the question.

But here’s a glimpse: The pan­dem­ic, which is cost­ing the NHL mil­lions mere­ly to stage this tour­ney, will tempt many fran­chis­es to trim pay­roll rather than spend in free agency. It fig­ures to be a buyer’s market.

So there’s a real pos­si­bil­i­ty strong goalies will be avail­able. Here are two proven net-min­ders that catch my eye:

At age 29, Robin Lehn­er has become the goalie Las Vegas trusts more than Marc-Andre Fleury, a three-time Stan­ley Cup cham­pi­on. And how much does Corey Craw­ford, who has rid­den in two vic­to­ry parades through down­town Chica­go, have in the tank at age 35?

Maybe there’s a goalie Sakic likes bet­ter, and per­haps he could use some of the organization’s tal­ent stock­pile to trade for an all-star between the pipes.

But please don’t tell me the Avs are going to stand pat, trust­ing Lady Luck will so kind as to let MacK­in­non do all the heavy lift­ing of win­ning a Cup by himself.

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