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Four Down, 12 To Go: The Brooms Come Out In Nashville |
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The Colorado Avalanche came, they saw and they conquered the Nashville Predators.
Colorado completed the sweep with a 5-3 win in Game 4 on Monday night. It was about as convincing a playoff round win as I've seen in quite some time. The Preds led for about five minutes in four games. Colorado dominated and it was not even close.
Check out these numbers.
I will say, this was Nashville's best effort. They hung tough and finally grabbed a lead, but it was too little, too late. The small taste of adversity ignited a fire in the Avalanche as they responded swiftly and often with three straight goals. Coach Bednar said it was good for his team to face some adversity especially since they responded in a positive and effective manner.
Cale Makar was amazing again. The kid had another three-point (1g 2a) night and finished the series with 10 points in four games.
Andre Burakovsky scored the Avs' first goal and finished with a goal and two assists. Devon Toews and Valeri Nichushkin scored at even-strength. Toews had three goals in the series. (The Islanders are a mess BTW) Nathan MacKinnon scored on the power play - it was Colorado's 7th power-play goal of the series.
Pavel Francouz made 28 saves to clinch the series. Frankie got the start in place of Darcy Kuemper because he still had swelling in his eye. This actually worked out well for Colorado because Kuemper gets some extra rest and Frankie gets to see more playoff action and he played well enough to win. All good stuff.
Colorado still has a long way to go but that was a great first step. I'm not sure it means anything though. What do I mean by that? Well, ESPN's hockey guru Puck Daddy believes Colorado will lose to the winner of the Blues/Wild series. Bummer, right?
First Round Stat Recap courtesy of Hockey-reference.com.
Thanks for reading,
Steve