Mackenzie Blackwood wasn\u2019t in a good place before the road trip. The Avalanche\u2019s usual starting netminder had been poor in three consecutive starts. And if you include a fourth appearance in relief against the Pittsburgh Penguins, Blackwood had stopped just 54-of-68 shots over a 10-day stretch.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s a .794 save percentage. It was that bad.<\/p>\n
Blackwood had fallen so much in that time that head coach Jared Bednar went with Scott Wedgewood against the Dallas Stars on March 18 in what was, at the time, the biggest game of the season. Wedgewood was pulled two nights earlier for giving up three goals on five shots and still got the nod. <\/p>\n
He had the coach\u2019s confidence far more than Blackwood did. It was no secret. <\/p>\n
He\u2019s the guy to go with right now, in my opinion,\u201d Bednar said at the time.<\/p>\n
On the four-game trip, Bednar gave Blackwood three starts. Against Winnipeg, Blackwood was able to avenge the loss to that same team in that very same building from earlier in the month. He finished the trip 3-0, giving up just five goals on 66 shots (.924 save percentage). That is much, much better than the previous stretch.<\/p>\n
Bednar deserves credit for this. The team knew Wedgewood was playing well. They know that, at any time, they can turn to the 33-year-old and he\u2019d be ready to go. But if they\u2019re going to make a Stanley Cup run, they\u2019ll likely need both goalies. It\u2019s no different than in 2022, when Darcy Kuemper won 10 games and Pavel Francouz six, albeit that was largely due to injuries for the starter.<\/p>\n
The Avs need both goalies to feel good about their game heading into the postseason. And Bednar is giving Blackwood every reason to build back and likely even be the starter for Game 1. <\/p>\n
Playing him three times on the trip, and having the goalie respond positively, is a large step towards making that happen.<\/p>\n
10 Takeaways<\/p>\n
1. Yes, you read that right. Blackwood went from surrendering 14 goals on 68 shots to five goals on 66 shots. The confidence of a goaltender is a funny thing.<\/p>\n
2. I\u2019m not sure how the next 11 games will go, but I do know that many are already prepared to crown Wedgewood the Game 1 starter. Not me. There\u2019s a luxury in having a backup goalie with great numbers, even if it\u2019s sometimes better than the starter. We saw it with Francouz when he played with Philipp Grubauer. His numbers were also not far from what Kuemper had in the Cup year. <\/p>\n
3. If that bad stretch for Blackwood from March 6-16 is an aberration, then the coaching staff has every reason to feel as comfortable with his game as you do with Wedgewood\u2019s. Before that, Blackwood had given up just 13 goals in his previous eight games, ranging from before the Olympic break to the games during that five-in-seven stretch in late February. <\/p>\n
4. Nathan MacKinnon scored No. 47 and 48 to build a four-goal lead on Cole Caufield in the Maurice Rocket Richard race. Those were some pretty big goals, too.<\/p>\n
5. You could tell MacKinnon wanted the hat trick. He was all over the ice in the final minutes, but the Avalanche were controlling the puck so much that Winnipeg didn\u2019t even get a chance to pull Connor Hellebuyck in a one-goal game. MacKinnon had one final look with 33 seconds remaining on a two-on-one with Gabe Landeskog. He looked off the pass, but was stopped by Hellebuyck.<\/p>\n
6. The distrubution of ice time among the forwards is something I\u2019m going to track every game from here on out. Given that this was a one-goal game, you\u2019d imagine that the top guys would all play more, right? Wrong.<\/p>\n
MacKinnon finished with 24:55. He was the leader by a wide margin. Martin Necas was second at just 19:20, followed by Brock Nelson (19:15), Nazem Kadri (16:11), Landeskog (14:30) Logan O\u2019Connor (13:32), Jack Drury (13:06), Artturi Lehkonen (12:06), Valeri Nichushkin (12:02), Parker Kelly (11:49), Ross Colton (10:32), and finally, Joel Kiviranta (8:23). <\/p>\n
7. The heavy PP minutes for the top four forwards played a large part in this, but imagine being so deep that Nichushkin and Lehkonen both barely crack 12 minutes, and Landeskog plays fewer than 15.<\/p>\n
8. Speaking of Lehkonen, that sweet give-and-go with MacKinnon on the game-winner means that every injured forward that returned during the road trip had a point in their first game back. Landeskog scored in Washington on Sunday, while O\u2019Connor had an assist, and Colton also scored in Pittsburgh on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
9. Drury\u2019s goal gave him a new career-high in goals (nine). The assist from Kelly was his 12th of the season, also a career best.<\/p>\n
10. Sam Malinski quietly has three points in his last two games. That\u2019s more than the previous 11 games combined (two points). <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mackenzie Blackwood wasn\u2019t in a good place before the road trip. The Avalanche\u2019s usual starting netminder had been…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":548299,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[1223,6522,385,99,4827],"class_list":{"0":"post-548298","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-colorado-avalanche","9":"tag-mackenzie-blackwood","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-winnipeg-jets"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=548298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548298\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/548299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=548298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=548298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=548298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}