DENVER — Jared Bednar had a blunt, one-word summation after Colorado rallied for a 3-2 overtime win against the New York Rangers on Tuesday night.
“Unimpressive,” the Avalanche coach said.
Bednar’s beef: His team had too many passengers and not enough contributors. He was far from pleased even as Colorado posted its 14th comeback victory courtesy of Devon Toews‘ goal 4:23 into overtime.
“Ultimately, it’s like we only had half a team playing,” said Bednar, whose club started a five-game homestand. “We had some guys that had to have monster efforts just to stay in the game.”
One of them was goaltender Mackenzie Blackwood, who made 27 saves, including several on Rangers breakaways or after breakdowns in Colorado’s defensive end.
“Probably gave up 12 grade-A scoring chances tonight and for him to only give up two goals is extremely impressive,” Toews said. “Kudos to him for keeping us in it.”
Added Bednar: “He was the best player on the ice, either team.”
Blackwood has been very reliable since being acquired in the deal with San Jose that sent fellow goalie Alexandar Georgiev to the Sharks last month. Blackwood is 9-2-1 with Colorado and has yet to give up more than two goals in a game.
“Sometimes things go well, and sometimes they don’t,” he said. “They can’t go well forever, but you can try and do your best as long as you can. Not really trying to keep track of that or anything, just trying to give them a chance to win every night.”
Blackwood’s brick-wall performance earned Bednar’s praise. So did the effort of Logan O’Connor and his gritty play around the net in overtime to get the puck to Nathan MacKinnon, who dished it over to Toews for the winning one-timer past Rangers goaltender Igor Shesterkin.
Also on Bednar’s praiseworthy list was the penalty-kill unit, which weathered Mikko Rantanen‘s interference call early in OT.
“That’s the thing — those guys that were on the ice, they worked hard,” said Bednar, whose team forced overtime when Artturi Lehkonen tied the score with 1:13 remaining in regulation. “They worked hard the whole game. The problem with tonight is we’re relying on the same eight, nine guys to do everything — power play, penalty kill, 5-on-5, because we had too many passengers.”
Asked if he was more annoyed or angry, Bednar responded: “Both.”
“We had practice yesterday that I didn’t love,” Bednar added. “Then tonight, we’re terrible, as a team.”