Avalanche face big goalie decision for Game 4 vs. Wild after first loss of playoffs

ST. PAUL, Minn. — Colorado Avalanche coach Jared Bednar hasn’t faced much scrutiny so far in these Stanley Cup playoffs. His team earned him that luxury by winning six consecutive games to start the postseason.

But after a 5-1 loss to the Minnesota Wild on Saturday, cutting the Avs’ series lead to 2-1, Bednar will have to make a difficult call in net ahead of Game 4.

Does he go back to Scott Wedgewood — who had a .950 save percentage in the first round but has allowed 11 goals in just over seven periods to start the second — or turn to Mackenzie Blackwood?

Blackwood, who came on in relief for Wedgewood early in the second period on Saturday, entered the season as the team’s starter. He missed part of the year with an injury, and Wedgewood was excellent in his place, earning the starting job to open the playoffs.

That doesn’t mean it’s his job for Colorado’s entire run.

“We’ll have a decision to make, but there’s a decision to make every night,” Bednar said when asked about his goalie plan for Monday’s Game 4. “We’ll talk about it and make a decision.”

Together, Wedgewood and Blackwood — nicknamed “The Lumberyard” — won the Jennings Trophy for fewest goals allowed in the NHL regular season. Wedgewood had the edge both in counting stats (.921 save percentage in 45 games compared to .904 in 39 games for Blackwood) and underlying ones (32.42 goals saved above expected, per Evolving-Hockey, compared to 19.08).

Traditional wisdom says Bednar should go back to Wedgewood on Monday. The 33-year-old has played like a No. 1 all season. But Bednar has insisted he isn’t going to approach his goaltenders that way just because that’s how teams have in the past. Plus Wedgewood — a journeyman-turned solid backup-turned standout starter — has never played this much hockey in a season.

It all leaves an air of mystery over Colorado’s net going forward. Is Bednar playing coy as a gamesmanship tactic? Or could he actually make a switch?

“I can’t just go off conventional thinking of, ‘It’s just one goalie,’” he said earlier this series. “For me, it’s not the way our team operated all year, and we had a lot of success. So I feel comfortable going with either guy.”

Wedgewood allowed three goals on 12 shots faced in Game 3. Bednar said he played hard throughout the night but “looked a little too aggressive” on a couple of the goals. The coach pointed to the Quinn Hughes wrister that beat him on a four-on-three, as well as Ryan Hartman’s power-play goal 4:23 into the second period. Bednar thought Wedgewood was too far out of his crease on the latter, allowing the Wild forward to swat a flying puck into the net. That’s when he made the switch.

“I felt like it was a good opportunity for us to get him in and see if it sparked our group,” Bednar said. “Just felt like they had all the momentum and all the speed early in that game, and we needed to do something.”

“You get a pull, you get an energy change,” Wedgewood added.

A little more than nine minutes after taking over the Colorado net — and 20 seconds after Colorado scored its first goal of the game — Blackwood allowed a perhaps rust-induced rebound on a Vladimir Tarasenko shot, with the puck bouncing off defenseman Brock Faber’s pants and in. Blackwood did not allow another goal and halted Tarasenko on a breakaway in the third in his first action since April 14.

“There’s moments where you could do things better, but after missing a lot of time, it was not bad,” Blackwood said.

Added Bednar: “He made some big saves in there, gave us a good chance.”

Blackwood finished with 12 saves on 13 shots. Getting him in also might have knocked away some rust that accumulated over the past month. If Bednar opts to go to Blackwood in Game 4, it’s a different decision than the one John Hynes made in Game 2, when he played Filip Gustavsson for the first time in three weeks.

“Coming into the middle of the game, they’re kind of already jumping and humming, and you’re trying to pick up where they’re at,” Blackwood said. “I think we did a better job as the game went on, but maybe a couple bad bounces and we didn’t have our best stuff tonight.”

Blackwood is correct that Colorado wasn’t at its best in Game 3. Bednar said postgame he felt he couldn’t get offense from any of his non-Nathan MacKinnon lines. Wild goalie Jesper Wallstedt was also excellent, rebounding from a poor Game 1 to make 35 saves.

“They get a bounce to go up (4-1), and I think it was an even game after that,” Wedgewood said. “Chop it up to, ‘You’re not gonna win it all.’”

Added Blackwood: “I think we’ll bring it next game, for sure.”

The skaters will need to do just that for Bednar’s goalie decision to matter.