With the series tied 2-2, Game 5 was the first of a best-of-three scenario. The stakes were already high for the Avalanche, but it didn't help that the group was without Cale Makar, who served his one-game suspension from a hit against Jared McCann in Game 4 and had totaled three points (1G, 2A) in the series.
And while Makar's absence - in joining Valeri Nichushkin (personal reasons) and Darren Helm (undisclosed) - from the lineup wasn't an excuse, it contributed to the challenge of Game 5.
Coming into Game 5, the Avalanche stressed the importance of receiving secondary scoring from forwards outside of their top-six (who had produced the entirety of the goals in the series aside from Makar and Devon Toews. And while Colorado executed a solid effort in Game 5 and generated some good looks, the team was still somewhat disjointed and unable to execute the way the Kraken did and thus, found themselves trailing the series 3-2 heading back to Game 6 in Seattle on Friday night.
"[The Kraken are] checking, they're doing exactly what we thought it'd be; checking hard, getting back above pucks, taking away time and space," Avalanche Head Coach Jared Bednar said. "And we seem to be getting frustrated, like we're not expecting it. We have to get better support on the puck in all three zones. You're going to have scrums that you get into where you come out with the puck and some that you don't. Our d-zone coverage it's the same thing. But right now, they just look like the quicker team. They're winning every race, they come out with pucks out of every scrum, we're not coming up with enough of them. I felt like their support was slow today."
Colorado and Seattle skated out to a 0-0 first period, where the Kraken held a 15-8 advantage in shots and hit two posts. Georgiev was dialed in right from puck drop - where he gloved a Vince Dunn shot just under three minutes into the period. The Avalanche killed off a J. Johnson penalty at 10:42 and received their first power play with 57 seconds left in the opening frame as Artturi Lehkonen was tripped.
Following the 0-0 gridlock first period, things opened up in the second period where Seattle took a 2-1 lead - as they scored the first goal of the game for the fifth-straight time this series - heading into the final 20 minutes of play.
After killing off a penalty early on (Logan O'Connor for tripping at 2:51), the Kraken capitalized at 6:35 as they crashed the crease. Jade Schwartz fired a shot from the left faceoff circle, into Georgiev's chest, but the netminder was unable to control the rebound. Geekie crashed the paint and tapped the loose pack past Gerogiev for the game's icebreaker.
The Avalanche pushed and came up with an equalizer just 1:20 after Geekie's strike off a quick transition play. Devon Toews sent a hefty cross-ice pass into the left corner of the Avalanche offensive zone. Grubauer abandoned his crease to try and rim the puck back up ice, but Rantanen read the play and instead fired the puck off the wall from the right faceoff circle on net. As Grubauer was late to return to his crease and missed his attempt at gloving the puck, MacKinnon crashed the net and Rantanen's shot deflected off his skate past the goal line for the 1-1 equalizer at 7:55.
