Avalanche, Wild trade punches in 'helter-skelter' Game 1

DENVER -- For the first 11 minutes of Sunday’s Game 1 of the Western Conference Second Round at Ball Arena, it was quiet.

Clearly the quiet was misleading because a few seconds later, it started. Goals. So, so many goals.

Three for the Colorado Avalanche in a span of 2:01. Then two for the Minnesota Wild in 1:02. Before you knew it, the Avalanche and Wild were trading goals like two prize fighters trading punches. Instead of the last man standing, it looked like it was going to come down to the last goal scored. 

"If you scripted that one, um, I don’t know how you do. I can’t explain it,” Avalanche coach Jared Bednar said after they held off the Wild 9-6 in the first game of the best-of-7 series.

Who can explain it? Fifteen goals total. Fourteen different goal-scorers between the two teams. Five goals from Avalanche defensemen. The nine goals the Avalanche had equaled the number of shots on goals the Montreal Canadiens had in their 2-1 win over the Tampa Bay Lightning in Game 7 of their Eastern Conference First Round series earlier on Sunday.

Game 2 is back at Ball Arena on Tuesday (8 p.m. ET; ESPN, SN, TVAS, CBC).

Pick your scoring poison, this game had it: Pretty goals (Wild forward Vladimir Tarasenko’s backhand at 6:45 of the second period), weird bounce goals (Wild forward Mats Zuccarello at 16:01 of the third period), first-career playoff goals (Avalanche defensemen Sam Malinski and Nick Blankenburg), and didn’t-see-that-coming goals (Wild forward Marcus Foligno’s 2-on-0 short-handed at 16:55 of the second period).

This was not a game to check your phone or look away from the ice for any reason. If you did, you probably missed something.

Wild coach John Hynes twice referred to the game as “helter-skelter.”

“Yeah, I mean, there’s a lot to unpack in this one,” he said. “Was a bit of a helter-skelter game. Obviously, you can tell by the score. We’ll take a look at some things and take some lessons out of this one. Be ready for Game 2.”

Oh, and the much anticipated matchup between two of the League’s top defensemen, Colorado’s Cale Makar and Minnesota’s Quinn Hughes, lived up to its billing, especially from an offensive perspective. Hughes had a goal and two assists, and logged a game-high 28:57 of ice time. Makar, who missed most of the first period after taking a big hit from Marcus Foligno 2:46 into the game, scored two goals, both in the third period, and notched a secondary assist on Blankenburg's goal at 4:16 of the second.

“Obviously, coming from the last game we played, it was really tight out there it felt like. Weren’t generating a lot. Today it just felt a little bit more open. Sometimes that can be a tendency to lack a little bit on the defensive side,” Makar said. “On both teams, it happened a little bit tonight. I don’t think we’re going to see that again. Just was probably a one-off. I like that we were able to stick with it and find a way to win in, obviously, a unique way.”

It was quite a departure for both teams after their respective first rounds. The Avalanche allowed the Los Angeles Kings five goals through four games in their sweep of that series. The Wild dealt with more offense from the Dallas Stars allowing 15 goals, but none in that six game series played out like this.

Entering Sunday, Colorado was second in goals-against per game (1.25) and the Wild were seventh (2.50).

The respective goalies in the first round were tremendous: Colorado’s Scott Wedgewood was 4-0 with a 1.21 goals-against average and .950 save percentage, while Minnesota’s Jesper Wallstedt was 4-2 with a 2.05 GAA and .924 save percentage.

On Sunday, Wedgewood and Wallstedt were getting it from all sides.

“If you let in eight, you're not going to win a lot of games, so just let that one by. That's done. There's nothing we can do about that,” Wallstedt said. “Now, now it's just about analyzing, looking through that one tonight, and then let it go by tomorrow and then focus on the next one."

Game 1 was frenetic, crazy, exhilarating, exhausting, pick a similar adjective. Each team probably thought the same or said the same. And the Wild and Avalanche also came out of this one saying the same thing: they don’t expect it to happen again.

“We've done it. I mean, we did it for 82 games and four games in the L.A. series, (we) have been a really stingy defensive team. And, tonight, it got a little bit loose, and we were able to score enough goals to win the game, but we pride ourselves too much on being a really hard team to play against in our own zone and tonight that wasn't necessarily the case,” Avalanche defenseman Devon Toews said. 

“At times it was (hard to play against in our own zone) and sometimes it wasn't there. So, it's on us to tighten that up.”