LAS VEGAS – With the Avalanche having a complete meltdown on the ice, Joe Sakic stood in an arena suite and stared into space, with no answer to a hockey mess 10 years in the making.
For a full decade, ever since Patrick Roy quit on him in a huff, Sakic has seemed hellbent on proving he doesn’t need no stinkin’ Hall of Fame goalie to win the Stanley Cup.
When this NHL playoff series against Las Vegas mercifully ends and the autopsy is conducted to determine how the Avalanche’s championship dream died, we’ll point to a fateful moment in Game 1.
Knights defenseman Dylan Coghlan, who hadn’t lit the lamp at the NHL level in nearly five years, broke a scoreless tie in the series opener with a soft goal when Colorado netminder Scott Wedgewood lifted his stick and exposed an opening between his pads to get beat in the dreaded five hole.
Wedgewood is a good dude, but the wrong man to lead a team to the Cup.
When the Avs needed a St. Patrick to save them for their hockey sins against Vegas, they got stuck with a Wedgie.
“I don’t think anyone had me on their bingo card for this kind of trajectory in my career,” the 33-year-old journeyman goalie told a wall of microphones and cameras encircled around his locker earlier this week, before the Western Conference finals spiraled out of control for the Avs.
Wedgewood is the 15th starter entrusted with the Colorado net since Roy quit as coach and abruptly ended his partnership with former teammate Sakic in August 2016, when two franchise legends split over irreconcilable differences on how to build a championship team.
Sakic boldly replaced his celebrity coach on the bench with an unproven commodity and then-unknown Jared Bednar.
For the ensuing 10 years, the Avs have also boldly tried to fill the hardest job in sports with stop-gap measures in net, tapping a series of cheap alternatives and career back-ups, leading them to the current tandem of Wedgewood and Mackenzie Blackwood, fondly referred to in Colorado as the Lumberyard.
The strategy has worked exactly once for Sakic, when temporary help named Darcy Kuemper backstopped the Avs on their championship run, then was allowed to walk as a free agent after making a meager 73 starts for Colorado.
Ever humble and generous of spirit, Wedgewood endeared himself to Avalanche teammates and fans with his trademark rallying cry: “This is fun. Four lines, six Ds, two tendies … all year. Let’s go!”
Although the Wood Brothers were statistically impressive during the regular season, two mediocre NHL goalies cannot make one great tendie when it matters most.
Despite injuries to superstars Cale Makar and Nathan MacKinnon, I’m convinced the Avs would hold the lead in this series instead of facing the grim reality of getting broomed from the playoffs if Wedgewood had outplayed his Vegas counterpart between the pipes.
“Carter Hart’s a hell of a goalie,” Knights coach John Tortorella said.
The advanced metrics compiled by moneypuck.com back Torts’ claim.
Among all goalies who have started in this season’s playoffs, Hart ranks fourth in saves above expected, a solid measure of how regularly a netminder rescues his teammates from their failures.
Montreal rookie sensation Jakub Dobes stands proudly in first place among the playoff field, followed at No. 2 by Carolina veteran Frederik Andersen, feared to be a weak link for the Canes.
And where does Wedgewood rank in saves above expected? Twelfth, behind eight goalies who have already been eliminated from the postseason and sent to the lake for summer vacation.
During their epic meltdown Sunday in a 5-3 loss, when the Avs needed a goalie to save their bacon, Wedgewood got thrown in the fire and the team’s championship dreams got burnt to a crisp.
At his current salary of $1.5 million, Wedgewood currently earns less money than 50 goalies being paid NHL money.
That’s a bargain, until it’s not.
And more often than not, there comes a time down the road to 16 wins that every hockey team on a Stanley Cup run needs a goalie to steal a game or two.
Wedgewood has simply not been up to that task.
When it was all falling apart for the Avs in Game 3, as the Knights were plundering the beauty of an early 3-0 lead and Bednar dilly-dallied on the bench, waiting until a TV timeout to assemble his shaken players for a chat, maybe the one thing that could’ve restored calm would’ve been a goalie standing on his head.
But Wedgewood has never been that guy in the NHL playoffs.
Back in 2001, with the Avs trailing 3-2 in the Stanley Cup final, they traveled to New Jersey, facing elimination. The Devils came out flying in the first period, but Roy repeatedly saved teammates from disaster, then posted a clean sheet in a 4-0 victory, while shutting down six power-play opportunities by Jersey.
That’s why Sakic was able to hoist the Cup and hand it to Ray Bourque following Game 7 back in Denver. And that’s a big reason why Roy is beloved in Colorado.
From Semyon Varlamov to Alexandar Georgiev, the 15 goalies who have started between the pipes since Bednar took over for Roy as Avalanche coach ain’t no St. Patrick.
When a hockey team gets its knickers in a knot, a Wedgie isn’t going to help.
To win the Cup, you don’t need a goalie to play out of his mind.
Until you do.
And now?
On the brink of elimination, the Avs have nothing left to do except pop a copium pill to dull the pain of how it all went so wrong.