Stan Kroenke doesn’t own the Avalanche. The Dallas Stars do.
Whiny Pete DeBoer does. Still. After all these years. After all those trades. After all those draft picks.
If not now, when?
The Avs were up 2-0 in the third period on Saturday night, laughing old demons away while the fans partied back home. With about eight minutes left on the clock, PDB reached into his back pocket, pulled out the title and waved it in the face of Mikko Rantanen.
The Moose got loose. The Avs got hoosed, as they say in Saskatoon.
If not now, when?
Colorado went into Dallas with a full series from Val Nichushkin, depth at center, a fourth line with real teeth, two new goaltenders and a miraculous return from Gabe Landeskog.
The Stars came in limping after a so-so April and without top scorer Jason Robertson and top defenseman Miro Heiskanen.
Dallas won anyway.
Jared Bednar has been a tremendous servant to this organization, the kind of stand-up guy who leaves a room better than he found it.
But this Whiny Pete thing is real. And it’s not going away unless one of them does first.
Bednar’s 0-4 against DeBoer in playoff series with the Avs. He’s now 0-2 against the guy in Game 7s. Only the Tampa Bay Lightning (11.1%) and New Jersey Devils (0.0%) had a worse power-play percentage than Colorado’s 13.6% conversion rate during the first round.
“I don’t know,” a justifiably dour Nathan MacKinnon told reporters Saturday. “Make better adjustments. We had looks. Not going in. Yeah. Bad adjustments.”
Stan Kroenke and son Josh have to ask a simple question: What would do MacKinnon more justice? Not rocking the boat and then watching it get tipped over by DeBoer every other spring? Or going after Dallas and/or Vegas with a new voice and a new plan?
Because hoping for Whiny Pete to miss the postseason — as he did in 2022, and you know what happened after that — isn’t a strategy.
Wyatt Johnston is 21. Big Lian Bichsel is 20. Thomas Harley is 23. Jake Oettinger, the netminder who’s surely eliminated the Avs about 38 times already, is only 26.
If not now, when?
The Mike Krzyzewski of college hockey, DU Pios coach David Carle, is just down the street. Make a call, Josh. Better yet, make five or six. If Jim Montgomery could work at the next level, so can Carle.
“All those (wins with) World Juniors and whatnot, I think it goes to show that he obviously gets the most out of his players,” Avs forward and DU alum Logan O’Connor told me late last month when Chicago was reportedly chasing Carle for its vacancy. “He’s great at developing his players. I mean, the winning culture that he represents from DU has been pretty remarkable to see. And if he decides to go pro, I have no doubt that he’s going to have great success with that as well.”
Bednar’s 9-7 in playoff overtime games with the Avs. But he’s 6-7 since 2020 and 1-4 since lifting the Cup in 2022. Bednar’s 15-17 as Avs coach in 1-goal postseason tilts, and 2-7 since dancing with Lord Stanley.
“I think tactically, (Carle’s) adjustments on the fly will set him apart (in the NHL),” O’Connor said. “I think that’s something that he’s always done a good job at, even when he was an assistant — he was on the penalty kill and (I) worked a lot with him on the penalty kill, (and) his small adjustments in games that other coaches maybe wouldn’t see.”
Meanwhile, when it comes to fine margins, the Avs keep falling through the cracks.
Does Stan care? Does Josh care? The Kroenkes know football, basketball and soccer pay the big bills. You get the sense they look at hockey the way many Power 4 college athletic directors sometimes look at women’s basketball. If it’s fine, leave it alone.
And the Avs are … fine. Technically. But they’re also, potentially, teetering on the brink. GM Chris McFarland has maxed out the credit card to buy MacKinnon and Cale Makar a second title now, to no avail.
Colorado doesn’t have a first-round draft pick again until 2027, which is when Bednar’s deal is up. Landeskog’s return is the story of the year so far, feel-good or otherwise — but it’s also about to add $7 million to the cap going forward. Makar is next up for the big payday MacFarland didn’t give Rantanen, and … how did that last one work out again?
It’s a Nuggets-esque dilemma without the Nuggets’ internal drama.
Which is why I asked Bednar last week: How are things with Josh and Stan, anyway? And did their quick trigger with their other championship coach town, Michael Malone, give you any pause?
“Well, so, (the) relationship’s great,” Bednar replied. “They’re obviously busy people, so we see them every once in a while when Josh is in town and (when) he’s around, I talk to him. I talked to him right before the playoffs. But he’s really supportive. He gives you good insight. They’re terrific owners, no question. I think no one’s going to put any more pressure on me or on our team than we put on ourselves. I think we’ve got high expectations for a long time here.
“I don’t really think about that a lot. I see a good coach (in Malone) get let go. Things aren’t working. It happens all the time. I understand it’s the business side of it. There’s a personal side to it. I know they really liked each other and liked him. You sometimes have to make a change, and that’s the business.”
The Avs blew a two-goal lead in the third Saturday. They blew a two-goal lead at home last Thursday. They blew three third-period cushions in this series.
Once is a lousy break. Two is lousy karma. Three? Three is lousy coaching. Period.
If not now, when?
“They were missing their best D and maybe their best forward, (and) we still couldn’t beat them,” MacKinnon told reporters Saturday. “Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know what we’re going to do.”
Who can you get who’s better? In Bednar’s defense, that’s a tough ask. But if the Avs don’t make a serious run at Carle, then just like many of those 50-50 pucks in Game 7, somebody else is going to beat them to it.
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