Avalanche goalie Pavel Fran­couz got pulled after five Stars goals on Sun­day, and Col­orado coach Jared Bed­nar’s plan for net duty in a must-win Game 5 was sud­den­ly clouded.

“I don’t want to talk about tomor­row night’s goal­tend­ing yet,” Bed­nar told reporters after the Avs’ 5–4 loss against Dal­las. “I’ve got to go back and look through this (game).”

All signs point to Fran­couz, now 2–4 in the Edmon­ton bub­ble, stay­ing in goal Mon­day with Avalanche starter Philipp Grubauer (low­er-body injury) out indef­i­nite­ly. The Avs’ cur­rent back­up, Michael Hutchin­son, made his post­sea­son debut Sun­day in relief of Fran­couz. And Col­orado team­mates have raved all year about “Frankie” and his calm­ing influence.

Bednar’s pause to name Fran­couz the start­ing goalie, though, is indica­tive of the team’s grow­ing issues defend­ing wave after wave of Stars offense. Dal­las con­tin­ues to score in bunch­es — four goals over 9:20 (Game 1), three goals over 6:05 (Game 2), and three goals over 4:27 (Game 3).

A com­mon denom­i­na­tor between bursts is sil­ly Col­orado penal­ties and Dal­las bul­ly tactics.

The Stars sprint­ed out to a 3–0 lead Sun­day after Avalanche for­wards Nazem Kadri and Vladislav Namest­nikov entered the box at the same time for rough­ing. Dal­las cap­i­tal­ized with a pair of pow­er-play goals aid­ed by heavy traf­fic in front of the net.

“We’re let­ting their big bod­ies stand in front of the net and tip pucks, unharmed, right now,” Avalanche for­ward Nathan MacK­in­non said. “I think we can win more bat­tles and be (mean­er) in our crease to help.”

One addi­tion­al option for bol­ster­ing pro­tec­tion around Fran­couz is to drop Colorado’s defense­men far­ther back in cov­er­age. Bed­nar said: “That’s some­thing to con­tem­plate.” But not at the risk of rein­vent­ing the Avs’ iden­ti­ty out of panic.

“I would call them tweaks more than major adjust­ments in your game dur­ing a series,” Bed­nar said. “We haven’t defend­ed our best in the series. I’ve seen our team defend bet­ter. I would rely on that rather than just going into some shell that we’re not used to play­ing in. We’re a bet­ter team and we defend bet­ter when we’re on our toes … mak­ing it hard on them with our quick­ness and our puck pres­sure all over the ice.

“We haven’t been at our best in this series and we’re going to have to be at our best to win the next game.”

All eyes will be on Fran­couz in Game 5.

“He’s got to be bet­ter, for sure,” Bed­nar said. “They’re mak­ing it hard on him, on the pow­er-play espe­cial­ly, but we’ve seen Frankie be way better.”