Instant reaction from the Avalanche’s 6-2 loss to the Dallas Stars in Game 5 of their first-round Stanley Cup Playoffs series.
1. Dallas=Flop City: Nobody does hockey’s dark arts like a Pete DeBoer team does the dark arts. Roope Hintz went after Nathan MacKinnon as if there were a price on No. 29’s head. But on a roster of hockey A.J. Pierzynskis, the Academy Award for Pure Sneakiness for Game 5 goes to — who else? — Jamie Benn. The Dallas captain added to his legend against the Avalanche about 5:30 into the third period when he skated into Colorado defender Josh Manson in front of the Avs’ net while Manson’s stick happened to be up. Sure enough, while Manson looked the other way, Benn’s neck connected with the stick. The captain fell to the ice in a heap as if trying to draw a red card in the Premier League. It worked — Manson was whistled for high-sticking, and Dallas got away with it. Again.
2. Blackwood pulled: Turns out Mackenzie Blackwood is mortal after all. The 28-year-old Avalanche goaltender, after cruising along through Games 1-4, landed on the wrong side of the hockey gods early and stayed there. Nine seconds into the game, the netminder lost a bank shot by Tyler Johnston as the hosts shocked everybody by stormng to a 1-0 lead . At the end of the opening stanza, it got even weirder. With 45 seconds left in the first, Blackwood accidentally tipped a goal off his blocker, over his back and into the net for a 2-0 Dallas cushion. He was pulled to start the third period in favor of Scott Wedgewood, the Avs’ veteran 1B option, after giving up five goals on 18 Dallas shots — easily his worst game of the postseason to date.
3. Historic (bad) start: That was fast. And not in a good way. You know it’s going to be a weird night when on the opening faceoff, Nathan MacKinnon loses his man, and that man finds himself with the puck in the corner. And you know it might not be your night when, nine seconds into the game, that man — Dallas’ Wyatt Johnson — banks a shot in from a crazy angle, almost behind the goal, that squirts under Mackenzie Blackwood and into the back of the net for an instant 1-0 Stars lead. It was the fastest postseason goal in Dallas history. It was the fifth-fastest in NHL history. And, in hindsight, a harbinger for even worse puck luck to come for the burgundy and blue, as Blackwood’s blunder was still to come.
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