Avalanche Game Six Plus/Minus: Georgiev Gives It His All, Stars Slowed Down

It’s time for playoff plus/minus! As with every game, you take the good with the bad, so time to take a look at the pluses and the minuses in Game Four against the Dallas Stars for the Colorado Avalanche.

Last one for this season. Can’t hold anything back…

+ First 40 Minutes

From my vantage point, the first 40 minutes from the Avalanche were their best 40 minutes of the series. They generated a fair bit of offense, but the key was what they were doing defensively. They gave the Stars absolutely nothing to work with. Colorado always had a third forward high in the zone to make sure that the Stars couldn’t get any rush offense started, which is pretty much how Dallas slowed down the Avalanche all series. Might as well take a page out of their playbook, right?

The problem is that for as well as Colorado played through 40 minutes, they only managed to sneak out to a 1-0 lead. They were the better team, but Dallas hung around, and it cost the Avalanche in the end.

+ Alexandar Georgiev

Full credit to Colorado’s goaltender. After Game One in Winnipeg, he was really at a crossroads with his career. If he faltered in Game Two, would he have played another second for the Avalanche? I’m not so sure.

That didn’t happen. He was rock solid the rest of the way, and Game Six might have been his best performance, to be honest. When that game got to overtime, it was extremely lopsided. Because of how the locker room works, I went down rink level for the rest of overtime, and watched it from a TV. Not exactly the most glamorous way to watch the game, but it worked. I don’t think I saw Jake Oettinger for a good 10 minutes at one point. All of the play was in Colorado’s end. That game should have ended after one overtime period, but Georgiev kept his team alive to get to the intermission. They did come out with a bit more jump in the second overtime, but couldn’t beat Oettinger.

It was an up and down year for Georgiev, and I do think the Avalanche will look at other goaltending options this summer, but he played well this postseason. He was supposed to be the downfall of this team, and he wasn’t at all.

– Overtime

Colorado looked completely gassed. It was a strange turnaround, because for the first 40 minutes, it looked like Dallas had nothing left in the tank. Like I mentioned after the game, Dallas’ depth allowed them to roll four lines, while Colorado had four forwards play more than the top Dallas forward. It’s no wonder…