Rented mules cringed. From Halifax to La Jolla, woodsheds waved white flags in solidarity.
Nathan MacKinnon blew past a Vegas defense that looked as if it was attempting to skate across wet sand. The burgundy blur cut right and thrusted into the clear, the way a shark does just before it breaches the surface with a wounded seal in its jaws.
There was nothing standing between MacKinnon and Vegas goaltender Robin Lehner but the cold and the inevitable. Nate The Great went top shelf, glove side. The scoreboard said Avalanche 6, Golden Knights 1. There was 22:55 of regulation yet to play.
Vegas got what it deserved: Nada.
The punks got punked.
The Knights turned up Sunday looking to fight. Or send messages. Or dance. It sure as heck wasn’t to play a hockey game.
You don’t sit a Hall-of-Fame goaltender for a series opener unless you’re thinking about the long game. Or a vacation.
“Rest is a weapon,” Avs captain Gabe Landeskog said after Colorado romped to a 7-1 victory in Game 1. “Especially at this time of year.”
It won’t be this easy again. Surely.
It will, however, be this physical. This brutal.
Because brutality is all the Knights have. You know it. They know it. With 11:56 left in the evening, the game so out of reach that the Mars rover found a seat near the glass, Vegas enforcer Ryan Reaves put his arm around the back of Ryan Graves’ neck, a classic clothesline, and threw the Avs defenseman to the ice.
If you’ll recall, the Blues tried a similar tactic in Game 3 a round earlier. You know how that one turned out.
Reaves had no stinking business opening this series after the blindside, face-plant-to-the-post job he did on Minnesota’s Ryan Suter just this past Friday night.
After Sunday’s goonery, Reaves has no business finishing it, either.
But if you’re counting on the NHL’s department of player safety to come riding to the rescue, don’t hold your breath.
If the Avs are to advance, let alone survive, they’re going to have to handle things by themselves. Including justice.
And, frankly, it wouldn’t have mattered if Knights veteran Marc-Andre Fleury had started between the pipes. Or was trying to protect his crease with nothing but a giant foam finger and a lanyard.
Either Vegas coach Peter DeBoer is playing it carefully or he’s the cockiest son of a biscuit on the planet.
Lehner was money for the Knights in the bubble last summer. But he also came in 5-6 lifetime against the Avs in 12 previous regular-season meetings, giving up almost three goals per stint (2.94).
Fleury vs the Avs: 26 regular-season trips, 15 wins, three career shutouts, two of them this past winter, 2.40 goals allowed.
But rest is a weapon, so DeBoer elected to keep the biggest sword within arm’s reach, his 36-year-old net-minder, on the bench. While the Avs had a week off after sweeping the Blues, Vegas got pushed by Minnesota to the brink.
Yet it was the Knights who looked rusty, start to finish. The Avs skated harder. They went to the boards hotter. And the heat got turned up big-time with 11:34 to go in the second period, when Graves rocked Vegas center Mattias Janmark in the corner, a shot that sent the big Swede to the locker room and Graves to the sin bin for interference.
Headhunting No. 27 in blue became the theme of the third period. Again, it was all the Knights had.
Avs-Knights, on paper, was supposed to be the NHL’s version of Dodgers-Padres, two heavyweights stuck in a division that wasn’t big enough for the both of them.
Sunday was Dodgers-Rockies. On the road.
Anytime a Vegas player found two strides of space, a Colorado skater would close in before the guy could make his third.
The Knights dumped and chased early until one of those rainbows was caught out of the air by Colorado’s Devon Toews. The defenseman collected the puck, shifted out of neutral, and initiated a rush that Mikko Rantanen capped off with a nifty backhand from the right face-off circle, putting the hosts up 1-0.
Five minutes later, Landeskog piled on from the left side, wristing a diagonal, silken thread from Cale Makar past Lehner to make it 2-0 midway through the opening stanza.
They had it coming. To a man.
“I don’t care who’s in net, to be honest with you,” Landeskog said.
DeBoer wasn’t resting Fleury. He was sparing him.
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Keeler: Nathan MacKinnon, Avalanche punked the punks. Hard. And Vegas had it coming. - The Denver Post
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