Blame Game

[Foppa2118]

You can’t have a disappointing loss like that, without there being plenty of blame to go around. Here’s how I see it, and the order of blame.


Players

Despite everything else, the Avs were still three blown third periods away, with two OT losses, from beating the Stars 6 out of 7 games, while dominating for large stretches of most of them, before making preventable mistakes that led to goals and losses.

The players would have got the bulk of the credit if they won, and they get the bulk of the blame for giving those games away.

Front Office

Too many changes to a championship team. Started with losing Kadri, when they had the cap to keep him, EJ, and Manson, by moving Compher, and being determined to make it happen, but didn't. Have a feeling they just decided to move on due to his age, similar to deciding to move on with Mikko. I’m not sure they were negotiating with Mikko in good faith. That lost swagger in Naz hurt the team chemistry big time.

Then trading Byram in a bad trade for a bad player. Lost more swagger they could have used in tight games, and an X factor goal scoring defenseman that could score big goals on individual plays, with Cale not scoring. Should have traded Girard for a stop gap 2C instead, and been more patient with Bo, and put a young defenseman with not many games played in a position to succeed, instead of a position to fail on his off side of the third pair with JJ.

Made a huge culture shifting trade mid season, sending an elite game breaker away for depth, but then used the extra money to downgrade at RW, and spend $5.25M on a 3C. There’s a reason you don’t see teams make those kind of trades mid season, and I think the team’s core was in shock the rest of the season, and probably still is. Mikko was a big part of that dressing room, and his loss had a big impact on team chemistry. I think that may be why they didn’t look like themselves, and found a way to lose, instead of finding a way to win. They needed a game breaking forward and they ended up trading him away. Then not making a handshake deal with Tulsky, to not send him to a rival this year, sent him to the team they should have known might land him, and he eliminated the Avs single handedly.

Game Breakers > Depth. For all the talk of Mikko needing to be motivated to play the way he is, he’s still always been a perennial 90-100+ point goal scorer in the regard season, and pt/gm+ in the playoffs. He’s always found a way to put up lots of points, and points means goals, and goals win you games. For a team built around offense like the Avs, when they’re not scoring goals, that’s also how you lose games.

Bednar

I’ve stated this many times now, but I don’t see a reason to put much blame on Bednar, when his coaching, system, and adjustments allowed his team to dominate the Stars 5v5. That’s how you determine who’s winning the coach vs coach battle.

Special teams played a big part in the loss, that was primarily Bennett and Pratt’s job.

I do think over playing the stars in the regular season, like Nate and Cale, may have contributed to them not having that killer instinct. They looked like they were trying to find that extra gear emotionally, but just didn’t have it. I think they had an adrenaline dump of sorts after the grueling regular season, and didn’t have enough time to recover.

It's also possible his vocie/message is getting stale and he's not able to keep the players focused consistently. This happens to the best coaches even, and coaches rarely get to leave on their own terms, even when it's not their fault. Hard to tell if that's what happened without being in the room.

Line combos and not using a time out in Game 7 were problems too. Different decisions may or may not have won them the series, but they shouldn’t have lost them the series, when they played like the better team for most of it despite them.

 

[Bonzai12]

Players -> Cale told the media he wasn’t playin well in the middle of the series. Give the dude credit - he’s may be the only individual in the entire org that owned up to a sub par performance before the post-game 7 news conference. He’s one of the players to blame, but true leader in accepting it. Players to blame? Cale already took some of it.

Bednar -> I keep seeing the 5v5 stat. Great. Nice narrative. He should have addressed the PK/PP earlier. His assistant coaches are part of his staff and if he’s not a big enough boy to address that, he needs blame. Did anyone else notice Bednar got a vote of confidence from Sakic the same day that Bennett was let go? That was likely precluded with a “fire Bennett, come back and start winning” directive from Super Joe. Maybe he got an awkward atta-boy pat on the butt when he was walking out of the office. Deboer owns him in the playoffs to the point that it’s no longer a coincidence - you can’t sell me that Deboer wins every series against us because of bouncy pucks, squeaky crossbards, and awkward angles. Nah - its not coincidence anymore.

CMac - probably the worst offender to blame so maybe he’s at the top. He’s probably 3/4 of the way to Calvin Booth-ing the Avs and gutting the org of any potential depth. The biggest problem with CMac in my eyes is that he just wasn’t ready for the role. Kadri left one month after CMac took the job. He was basically a rookie - and he blew it. I’m still not even sure what the strategy was this trade deadline or who pushed it. But it was totally clear that they decided to go the veteran grinder route. I still don’t know if this was CMac, Joe or Bednar but it clearly flopped and now it feels like an all-or-nothing run that was a mouse fart first round loss. I think I buy what most of ya’ll are sellin on here - the all-in moves and trading away every asset really wreaks of a guy whose skill level feels on par of a GM of PlayStation hockey club.

 

[Foppa2118]

Bednar -> I keep seeing the 5v5 stat. Great. Nice narrative. He should have addressed the PK/PP earlier. His assistant coaches are part of his staff and if he’s not a big enough boy to address that, he needs blame.

Not a narrative, a fact.

How many head coaches in the NHL do you think micro manage the PK or tell their GM to fire their assistants? I'm gonna go with 0.

And why would he even need to micro manage special teams, when the PK was 4th in the NHL the last 60 games, including a 40 game stretch where they were tied for 1st, and the PP was 1st in the NHL the last 33 games?

What is the non narrative reason for why he's to blame for the special teams in the playoffs?

 

[jimmysheva]

Coaching staff fault, especially the power play. Both Necas and MacK are right handed shooter. Having both in the first PP unit means Necas is useless there because he defers to MacK. Losing Rantanen means there's no left handed shooter in the power play which means everyone knows we'll be looking to feed to MacK to shoot.

Why not replace Necas with Drouin and have him play the Rantanen's role in PP1 and have Necas play PP2 in MacK's role

 

[ABasin]

You can’t have a disappointing loss like that, without there being plenty of blame to go around. Here’s how I see it, and the order of blame.


Players

Despite everything else, the Avs were still three blown third periods away, with two OT losses, from beating the Stars 6 out of 7 games, while dominating for large stretches of most of them, before making preventable mistakes that led to goals and losses.

The players would have got the bulk of the credit if they won, and they get the bulk of the blame for giving those games away.

Front Office

Too many changes to a championship team. Started with losing Kadri, when they had the cap to keep him, EJ, and Manson, by moving Compher, and being determined to make it happen, but didn't. Have a feeling they just decided to move on due to his age, similar to deciding to move on with Mikko. I’m not sure they were negotiating with Mikko in good faith. That lost swagger in Naz hurt the team chemistry big time.

Then trading Byram in a bad trade for a bad player. Lost more swagger they could have used in tight games, and an X factor goal scoring defenseman that could score big goals on individual plays, with Cale not scoring. Should have traded Girard for a stop gap 2C instead, and been more patient with Bo, and put a young defenseman with not many games played in a position to succeed, instead of a position to fail on his off side of the third pair with JJ.

Made a huge culture shifting trade mid season, sending an elite game breaker away for depth, but then used the extra money to downgrade at RW, and spend $5.25M on a 3C. There’s a reason you don’t see teams make those kind of trades mid season, and I think the team’s core was in shock the rest of the season, and probably still is. Mikko was a big part of that dressing room, and his loss had a big impact on team chemistry. I think that may be why they didn’t look like themselves, and found a way to lose, instead of finding a way to win. They needed a game breaking forward and they ended up trading him away. Then not making a handshake deal with Tulsky, to not send him to a rival this year, sent him to the team they should have known might land him, and he eliminated the Avs single handedly.

Game Breakers > Depth. For all the talk of Mikko needing to be motivated to play the way he is, he’s still always been a perennial 90-100+ point goal scorer in the regard season, and pt/gm+ in the playoffs. He’s always found a way to put up lots of points, and points means goals, and goals win you games. For a team built around offense like the Avs, when they’re not scoring goals, that’s also how you lose games.

Bednar

I’ve stated this many times now, but I don’t see a reason to put much blame on Bednar, when his coaching, system, and adjustments allowed his team to dominate the Stars 5v5. That’s how you determine who’s winning the coach vs coach battle.

Special teams played a big part in the loss, that was primarily Bennett and Pratt’s job.

I do think over playing the stars in the regular season, like Nate and Cale, may have contributed to them not having that killer instinct. They looked like they were trying to find that extra gear emotionally, but just didn’t have it. I think they had an adrenaline dump of sorts after the grueling regular season, and didn’t have enough time to recover.

It's also possible his vocie/message is getting stale and he's not able to keep the players focused consistently. This happens to the best coaches even, and coaches rarely get to leave on their own terms, even when it's not their fault. Hard to tell if that's what happened without being in the room.

Line combos and not using a time out in Game 7 were problems too. Different decisions may or may not have won them the series, but they shouldn’t have lost them the series, when they played like the better team for most of it despite them.

Thank you for the well thought out reply.

I also put things in the same order, though I'll offer perhaps a few different viewpoints.

The players are the main culprit here, as they're the ones on the ice, they're the ones who couldn't lock down three 3rd period leads. They just made bad mistakes late in games. And lost.

I think CMac is up there also though. I mean, what was he doing in the 2024 offseason? During this season, he had to replace not one, but two goaltenders midseason in order to compete. Then, he had to replace not one, not two, but THREE centers in order to compete? Was the team he went into the season with, even a playoff team? I'm not sure they were.

But Bednar has some responsibility also. Mainly the power play. Dallas made one major change in their PK - pressuring Makar at the point - which worked, and the Avs didn't do anything at all to adjust. Part of that was Makar missing damn near every open shot he had, but they didn't move, didn't change, didn't do anything. That's a coaching failure.

In the end, there's plenty of yuck to go around. No one deserves it all, they all deserve it a little.

 

[CobraAcesS]

Every f***ing year there's a different excuse to lose to that specific coach.

"But we were the better team in most games"
"Val was suspended"
"Georgiev/Grubauer wasn't good"
"Our players didn't show up"
"We had injuries"
"Our top players were tired"

Enough. At one point we have to face reality.

This year we were absolutely stacked and he was missing his top scorer and his top dman and STILL beat us.

This is the crux..

Outside of special teams I have a hard time fully blaming Bednar, but..

Watching Edmonton and Dallas in the final with deeply flawed teams, and injury issues definitely puts things into perspective.

I long decided whoever is responsible for our power play should be fired due the contrast between ours and much worse teams.

I'm not good at the Xs and Os of hockey, but the power play has been glaringly obvious like a fresh turd in the middle of the living room floor for a long time.

At some point Bednar needs to be judged against his peers. Not having a perfect roster is not an excuse. Dude is a one trick Poney at this point. That one trick is really good, but tactically Bednar is about as good as I am adjusting on the offensive side of the puck.

The Lion needs a heart, or more aptly needs a brain for that side of the ice.

He needs an offensive coordinator not just an assistant. Hell I think they should hire two more coaches for the offense. Absolutely drill down on infusing more creativity and second nature tactics both on the power play and 5v5.

Nate for as awesome as he is, scores and makes plays through sheer will and talent. Makar is actually not that different.

The team needs a more dynamic mind so they can think less and get the puck on and off the stick faster in all situations.

Sullivan would have solved that as a head coach, not a Bednar strength though. If you want to maximize Makar and Mack long term, they'll need real help in this area, especially as they age.

 

[Sea Eagles]

Like many others have said, I'm in the same boat as in, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" territory. We should have somehow accommodated Kadri. Top 6 of Lehks, Landy, Mack, Kadri, Nuke, Rants should never have been split up. I was completely fine with a make-shift replacement for Landy with Colton or someone else tbh). Okay, that likely meant no Drouin, Nelson, Necas (but so what). Bottom six is bottom six.

Defense wise, like forwards, if we kept Kardi, there's no need for Mitts. Means we could have kept Bo. That was where our strength was, and this was trifled with. Toews, Girard, Manson, Byram, Makar +1 other should be our D.

BUT, what's happened has happened. Moving forward, we need to have patience (and hope that Cmac can keep the group together now). We need to allow chemisty and combinations to rebuild. I do think our fanbase is unfairly critical of some of the acquisitions. On paper, that squad in round one versus Dallas was MINT - they just didn't fully know or understand each of their idiosyncrasies yet. BUT, that will happen - given patience and time.

Coach Bednar is mint. He improves players (even Kadri). That's key. He also apapts (in my opinion, which is contrary to what many think). Let him work with the new players (noting 35% of the team changed with the new players coming in) - that's a LOT. He's also sent a shot across the bow about accountability giving the sacking of Bennett. Players and coaches are now on notice !!

Cmac. Okay, imo, he's over played his hand, but on the flipper, has absolutely done his best depite the circumstances. That roster on paper - oooof (SO strong and good). The timing, in my view is what is at issue here. Too many changes, not enough time to impliment that system / chemistry. This off season is HUGE for him. He's stuck with and backed Bednar. He's changed the roster so much, it's truly his team. He knows the pressure is on now.

The future is looking very bright imo. Stay strong, buckle in, and enjoy the show. Success is right around the corner.

 

[NMAvsman]

I'll say players (unpopular opinion but plenty of blame to go around) ....but damn a lot of choking by key guys. My favorite player was awful by his own standards (Makar) and we played scared and still should have won in 5 games. Stanley cup playoffs are grueling to be honest, nothing quite like them. Did Cmac have to back track and fix the roster late, yes, but most analysists after the trade deadline was blown away by our roster improvement. AT least the goalies were fixed by January. Another big elephant that is fixed for next year is finally having a captain, I hope. I love me some Landy, but having no captain to get the troops mentally aligned for several YEARS was killing us. For me, that was a glaring problem. I am really curious to see how that impacts us this year (hoping he is ready to be back full time). This roster is good enough if we can retain what we have and allow team to gel in the systems. I think Sammy G, Kivy, and Drouin will be gone to keep it somewhat together. Losing Sammy will hurt the transition game a lot in my opinion. I get the doom and gloom, hell I am still pissed. As for losing Mikko, he was irritating me the last two years. Piling up points but playing soft. He was a no-show last year in playoff time. Easy to Monday morning quarterback in here, but the trades made a lot of sense to me when they went down.

 

[Spilot23]

Coaching staff fault, especially the power play. Both Necas and MacK are right handed shooter. Having both in the first PP unit means Necas is useless there because he defers to MacK. Losing Rantanen means there's no left handed shooter in the power play which means everyone knows we'll be looking to feed to MacK to shoot.

Why not replace Necas with Drouin and have him play the Rantanen's role in PP1 and have Necas play PP2 in MacK's role

Isn't that what they did in the playoffs? Drouin was mostly in Rantanen's spot but the problem is that he can't shoot either. I also agree that Necas was useless in the PP playing down low. IMO what would've been better is Landy doing the front net presence and Nelson on Rantanen's spot. The problem was not trying anything new when nothing worked we just kept going with the same exact unit and same exact strategies (Pass to Mack for a one timer, Mack passing in the bumper for a quick shot or Makar shooting from the point).

 

[AslanRH]

So many people were writing off the Avs being anything other than fodder prior to the Mikko trade because of depth issues, center issues, etc.
Can't imagine it being worse than now, but CMac keeping Mikko and he walks at the end of the season after a 1st or 2nd round loss would be something to experience on HFAvs.

 

[The Moops]

You can’t have a disappointing loss like that, without there being plenty of blame to go around. Here’s how I see it, and the order of blame.


Players

Despite everything else, the Avs were still three blown third periods away, with two OT losses, from beating the Stars 6 out of 7 games, while dominating for large stretches of most of them, before making preventable mistakes that led to goals and losses.

The players would have got the bulk of the credit if they won, and they get the bulk of the blame for giving those games away.

Front Office

Too many changes to a championship team. Started with losing Kadri, when they had the cap to keep him, EJ, and Manson, by moving Compher, and being determined to make it happen, but didn't. Have a feeling they just decided to move on due to his age, similar to deciding to move on with Mikko. I’m not sure they were negotiating with Mikko in good faith. That lost swagger in Naz hurt the team chemistry big time.

Then trading Byram in a bad trade for a bad player. Lost more swagger they could have used in tight games, and an X factor goal scoring defenseman that could score big goals on individual plays, with Cale not scoring. Should have traded Girard for a stop gap 2C instead, and been more patient with Bo, and put a young defenseman with not many games played in a position to succeed, instead of a position to fail on his off side of the third pair with JJ.

Made a huge culture shifting trade mid season, sending an elite game breaker away for depth, but then used the extra money to downgrade at RW, and spend $5.25M on a 3C. There’s a reason you don’t see teams make those kind of trades mid season, and I think the team’s core was in shock the rest of the season, and probably still is. Mikko was a big part of that dressing room, and his loss had a big impact on team chemistry. I think that may be why they didn’t look like themselves, and found a way to lose, instead of finding a way to win. They needed a game breaking forward and they ended up trading him away. Then not making a handshake deal with Tulsky, to not send him to a rival this year, sent him to the team they should have known might land him, and he eliminated the Avs single handedly.

Game Breakers > Depth. For all the talk of Mikko needing to be motivated to play the way he is, he’s still always been a perennial 90-100+ point goal scorer in the regard season, and pt/gm+ in the playoffs. He’s always found a way to put up lots of points, and points means goals, and goals win you games. For a team built around offense like the Avs, when they’re not scoring goals, that’s also how you lose games.

Bednar

I’ve stated this many times now, but I don’t see a reason to put much blame on Bednar, when his coaching, system, and adjustments allowed his team to dominate the Stars 5v5. That’s how you determine who’s winning the coach vs coach battle.

Special teams played a big part in the loss, that was primarily Bennett and Pratt’s job.

I do think over playing the stars in the regular season, like Nate and Cale, may have contributed to them not having that killer instinct. They looked like they were trying to find that extra gear emotionally, but just didn’t have it. I think they had an adrenaline dump of sorts after the grueling regular season, and didn’t have enough time to recover.

It's also possible his vocie/message is getting stale and he's not able to keep the players focused consistently. This happens to the best coaches even, and coaches rarely get to leave on their own terms, even when it's not their fault. Hard to tell if that's what happened without being in the room.

Line combos and not using a time out in Game 7 were problems too. Different decisions may or may not have won them the series, but they shouldn’t have lost them the series, when they played like the better team for most of it despite them.

Good to see that you're back even if we disagree. Though to be fair my arguments are mostly emotional where yours are logical

My question though is why was nothing changed to the special teams? 7 game series are too short to rely on averages. If it's not working you have to make some adjustments but PP and PK both got dominated with no changes and I think that Bednar has to take some heat from that.

And where do we go from here in your opinion?

 

[forsbergavs32]

Good to see that you're back even if we disagree. Though to be fair my arguments are mostly emotional where yours are logical

My question though is why was nothing changed to the special teams? 7 game series are too short to rely on averages. If it's not working you have to make some adjustments but PP and PK both got dominated with no changes and I think that Bednar has to take some heat from that.

And where do we go from here in your opinion?

Weather is still nice so we should go to Disneyland from here.

 

[The Moops]

Weather is still nice so we should go to Disneyland from here.

I'm in Florida right now and the weather is great. Got kissed by a jellyfish this morning though. Wasn't my favorite moment ever

 

[forsbergavs32]

I'm in Florida right now and the weather is great. Got kissed by a jellyfish this morning though. Wasn't my favorite moment ever

Just pee on it and you’ll be fine

 

[The Moops]

Just pee on it and you’ll be fine

Already tried, but I got some weird looks and then I got asked to leave the beach

 

[forsbergavs32]

Already tried, but I got some weird looks and then I got asked to leave the beach

No no no, you were supposed to pee on the sting

 

[the_fan]

So many people were writing off the Avs being anything other than fodder prior to the Mikko trade because of depth issues, center issues, etc.
Can't imagine it being worse than now, but CMac keeping Mikko and he walks at the end of the season after a 1st or 2nd round loss would be something to experience on HFAvs.

You don’t let players like Mikko go period. He was part of the core and won the cup and has produced every single year even if often looked lazy. Even a lazy Mikko with the Avs would put up more points than Necas will ever do with the Avs

 

[AvsWraith]

You don’t let players like Mikko go period. He was part of the core and won the cup and has produced every single year even if often looked lazy. Even a lazy Mikko with the Avs would put up more points than Necas will ever do with the Avs

And we still lose to Dallas no matter what we do.

You cannot convince me that Mikko takes it to Dallas like he did to us. If anything, some MacK's seven goals, turn into assists to Mikko, and we still blow the lead.

 

[JuJu Mobb]

Blame Jere Innala and Chase Bradley.

 

[the_fan]

And we still lose to Dallas no matter what we do.

You cannot convince me that Mikko takes it to Dallas like he did to us. If anything, some MacK's seven goals, turn into assists to Mikko, and we still blow the lead.

Then you change the coach instead of trading a core player. That’s what normal management does. They will replace the coach before trading their top players, but unfortunately the Avs management does the opposite

 

[expatriatedtexan]

Of every trade Chris MacFarland has been a part of for the Avalanche, the Mikko Rantanen trade was his very best.

It was an absolute necessity, with Mikko playing hardball, the deadline approaching and the Avs having basically signaled the world the issue wasn't going to last past the deadline.

It takes time to set up trades. I appreciate that at one minute to midnight the princess decided maybe the size of the ring could be negotiable... the wheels of the deal where already turning. I'm sorry... after Mikko waited up until then to come to his senses, why would I believe he's doing this is good faith? He didn't accept their last offer, he just said he'd be flexible. Paul Stastny said as much, how did that go?

I honestly believe the team assembled and starting game 2 (Landy's first game back) was better than any lineup we've had since Game 6 against Tampa.

I give Chris all the credit in the world for assembling what should have been a slam-dunk. I blame Jared for being the most likely to find a way to f*** it up. All you need to do is look at his lineups. Do you honestly believe Jared Bednar gave this team the best chance to win a best of 7 with his lineups?

 

[the_fan]

Of every trade Chris MacFarland has been a part of for the Avalanche, the Mikko Rantanen trade was his very best.

It was an absolute necessity, with Mikko playing hardball, the deadline approaching and the Avs having basically signaled the world the issue wasn't going to last past the deadline.

It takes time to set up trades. I appreciate that at one minute to midnight the princess decided maybe the size of the ring could be negotiable... the wheels of the deal where already turning. I'm sorry... after Mikko waited up until then to come to his senses, why would I believe he's doing this is good faith? He didn't accept their last offer, he just said he'd be flexible. Paul Stastny said as much, how did that go?

I honestly believe the team assembled and starting game 2 (Landy's first game back) was better than any lineup we've had since Game 6 against Tampa.

I give Chris all the credit in the world for assembling what should have been a slam-dunk. I blame Jared for being the most likely to find a way to f*** it up. All you need to do is look at his lineups. Do you honestly believe Jared Bednar gave this team the best chance to win a best of 7 with his lineups?

How about keeping Mikko and replacing Bednar? Imagine a new coach coming in and getting Mikko to play the way he’s doing with Dallas in this playoffs. If I was Mikko i also wouldn’t accept that 11.7 mill contract Avs offered. That’s just straight up lowballing after everything Mikko has done for the Avs

 

[CobraAcesS]

How about keeping Mikko and replacing Bednar? Imagine a new coach coming in and getting Mikko to play the way he’s doing with Dallas in this playoffs. If I was Mikko i also wouldn’t accept that 11.7 mill contract Avs offered. That’s just straight up lowballing after everything Mikko has done for the Avs

Mikko has had some highs obviously, but has cooled off significantly and while up against a team coming back at them and was a zero in their game 7.

So played would be more apt than playing.

He was pissed off at the Avs, no one has gotten more out of him than Cmac.

 

[the_fan]

Mikko has had some highs obviously, but has cooled off significantly and while up against a team coming back at them and was a zero in their game 7.

So played would be more apt than playing.

He was pissed off at the Avs, no one has gotten more out of him than Cmac.

We can nit pick Mikko’s production game by game, but the fact remains, he still produces way over PPG not only regular season but playoffs as well. He hasn’t had a playoffs below PPG since 17-18 his first playoff appearance when he only had 4 assists in 6 games

 

[EdAVSfan]

Reversing the Mikko for Necas and Drury trade would likely result in this upcoming season being completely burned.

The trade alone is clearing at least 5M in cap space for the upcoming season.

The season may already be shot. But reversing that trade would essentially guarantee it.