DENVER — Minutes into Tuesday night’s historic Kraken playoff debut, feisty defenseman Will Borgen served notice his underdog team wasn’t just happy to be here.
Borgen laid a heavy hit along the side glass on Avalanche forward Arturri Lehkonen. The gauntlet had been thrown by the visiting challengers and continued to be throughout this 3-1 victory over the defending Cup champions, from the game’s very first goal to its final one.
That initial goal, moments after Borgen’s hit, came when Yanni Gourde pressured Avalanche defender Devon Toews into an errant behind-the-net clearance attempt right onto Eeli Tolvanen’s stick. The initial shot was stopped by Alexandar Georgiev, but Tolvanen quickly swatted home the rebound to stun the Ball Arena crowd just 3:26 in. And the final goal, with the Kraken up by one four minutes into the third, would come off another forced turnover when Alex Wennberg grabbed a loose puck behind Colorado’s net and fed it to Morgan Geekie for a one-timed strike from the slot.
And even though Colorado had gotten a tying goal by Mikko Rantanen midway through the opening frame — tapping in a Nathan MacKinnon pass at the goal mouth — the Avalanche never really recovered from that initial Kraken surge in the opening minutes. Instead, the Kraken kept on pressuring — and hitting — the Avs at every opportunity and Wennberg regained them a 2-1 lead just 80 seconds into the middle period by firing a wrist shot behind an out-of-position Georgiev from the right faceoff circle.
There had been question marks about how Georgiev would look in his first career playoff start and he certainly was outplayed by Kraken counterpart Philipp Grubauer. Though the Kraken were mostly effective at limiting Colorado chances the first half of the game, it was late in the second period that Grubauer truly stood out.
That period saw the Avs awarded the only two power-play chances and a well-positioned Grubauer preserved his team’s lead with a handful of timely saves off one-timed opportunities. Then, when his team began giving the puck away in its own end, Grubauer again was at his finest, stopping J.T. Compher and Valeri Nichushkin on back-to-back chances from close in.
The Kraken had not won a regulation game against a playoff team since beating the Bruins in Boston back on Jan. 12. Their most effective style can be an exhausting one to play and there were huge questions coming into this series about their ability to consistently maintain that suffocating, physical pace.
Then again, the Kraken had twice defeated Colorado in this building during the regular season and went 2-0-1 against them overall. They also nearly beat them here in January of last season, blowing a 3-1 lead late in the second period and losing by a goal.
But they’ve looked comfortable here throughout their brief history and certainly executed their game plan this time as well.
They’d talked plenty beforehand about needing to slow the Avs down with their forecheck and did just that throughout, forcing Colorado turnovers and limiting the Avs' ability to freewheel out of their own end. It was a physical, relentless style the Kraken had deployed to perfection in defeating both the Bruins and the Toronto Maple Leafs prior during that January road stretch in which they compiled in road games during a franchise record eight game win streak in January.
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