Avalanche Room: MacKinnon Plays The Mental Game With Stars, ‘No Quit’ In His Team

MacKinnon on leaning on experience:

“We’ve never really chased a 3-1 deficit recently, but we know how it felt after we lost to St. Louis when we were up 3-1. It felt like the world was ending. Same thing with Tampa in the finals. It’s a lot. Obviously we won the Game 6s, but it doesn’t feel great when you let a team back in. It’s our job to put a little pressure on them.”

MacKinnon on the last second goal in the first:

“Yeah, it’s huge. We’re not chasing the game. Same thing after the second. We’re not chasing it. We just feel like we’re hanging around and just not going away. That was a key tonight. Just no quit.”

Avalanche Forward Jonathan Drouin

Avalanche Head Coach Jared Bednar

ON CALE MAKAR’S SECOND GOAL:

“I think he did that like three times. He drove one right to the paint, and I don’t know what it hit, I haven’t seen it on replay, but he drove it right in there all the way down to Oettinger. They did a nice job sort of picking everyone else up. To be able to recognize that and not just shoot it from distance after you beat a guy and to be able to drive it in the paint takes an elite level of patience and awareness and skill. And he showed that multiple times tonight. They’re doing such a good job getting in the shooting lanes. Everyone one of our D or theirs doesn’t have the ablity (like Makar) to dance a guy in space and get to the net, right? It takes elite skill to be able to do that and there’s only a handful of guys in the league that can do it. And he ends up doing it multiple times tonight to create that scoring chance. It’s just high skill awareness. Understanding your opponent I’m sure is part of it and what they’re trying to do. Great on him. That’s what we need from him. Obviously we need that now especially where we’re at in the series. His skill shines through and his competitiveness shines through tonight.’’

SPLITTING UP MACKINNON/RANTANEN… THOUGHTS ON THE RESULTS OF THAT:

“No complaints. I was asked earlier why and we weren’t producing. We weren’t producing enough to win and I think as a coach, you want to try and stay with it. Let the team respond. Let the line respond to whatever tactical and systematic things you can give them. But at some point you might need to change it to get a spark. It’s always a balance of just going to something new or changing it too early. They’ve proven in the past that they can come back. And they might have had a great game together tonight. I don’t know. But I did like both those lines. (Drouin), he played a really good Game four coming back from injury. He’s had chemistry with MacK so we put him there and obviously they had a good night and same thing with Mikko. Impactful plays like he gets in on the forecheck. Good breakout, good dump, good forecheck to sort of create the Parise to Girard shot that Mittelstadt scores on. So I mean, we’re happy with the change. No question. I don’t think we can we can sort of look back and say we’re not. We got the win. That’s the most important thing.”

UPDATE ON YAKOV TRENIN:

“He wasn’t good enough to come back in the game. I don’t know if it’s anything serious. But if he misses next game, it’s serious enough and then we’ll see like we’ll see how he presents tomorrow, what kind of work the trainers can do on him. And we’ll try to get him ready to go and if he’s not ready, we’d have to put somebody else in.”

ON HIS AVALANCHE FINALLY GETTING A LEAD:

“Oh, yeah. Definitely. Like to get our first lead in the series even though it’s been close for long periods of time. Then they gotta push. Like, we haven’t forced them throughout the course of this series to push and have to try and create. They are a smart, disciplined, well coached, well balanced hockey team. Part of that is, you’re allowed to be that more often when you’re not behind. So it was frustrating because I thought we had a good first period. When that turnover finally happens we were talking and trying to make sure we’re disciplined and pushing to try and get the first goal and still defending the right way and we haven’t been able to get it. And we finally get it in the third period, so that helps. You can see that, even though there’s 18 minutes left, they have to get more guys involved in their attack to try and create. Hopefully we’re defending well enough throughout the course of the series that they’re gonna have to put more guys involved in the rush and O-zone play. And we’re able to capitalize again so it’s I think it’s huge to be able to get that and gives our team room to breathe. They are a disciplined group and resilient group so you get the lead I don’t think the comeback goal rattled us at all. W’ve got lots of time to keep pushing, keep doing the right things and just stressing the right things on the bench. But they were bought into it tonight. It was a really big group effort here.”

Avalanche defenseman Cale Makar

ON ALEXANDAR GEORGIEV’S RESOLVE:

“Yeah, I mean, playoffs can be unique. You can have off games sometimes, but it’s about how you recover and how you’re mentally strong enough to bring it back. And obviously, going back to the last series, it was a tough first game for the whole team, it wasn’t just him. Then he just completely picked it up and changed his mindset in the second game and he’s been awesome for us. And so, again, that just goes back to that toughness and the mentality that it doesn’t matter anymore. You’re kind of just going day-by-day.”

Avalanche goaltender Alexandar Georgiev

ON THAT LAST SECOND GOAL IN THE FIRST

“Yeah, it was huge. We didn’t want to be down one coming into the second. I felt we played so great the first period, spending so much time in their zone, creating good chances and great feeling to capitalize on that and we have a little energy coming into the second.”