Oddsmakers like Avalanche, but Colorado players taking underdog mentality against Jets
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The oddmakers consider the Avalanche to be favourites in a best-of-seven NHL playoff series against the Winnipeg Jets, but don’t try to tell that to the Colorado players.
“You do have to embrace the underdog mentality,” Avs’ defenceman Josh Manson Sunday ahead of Game 1 at Canada Life Centre (6 p.m.).
“They finished higher in the standings, they won the season series, handily. You’ve got to come in with that underdog mentality and I think that’s a good thing to have.”
Although the Jets finished second in the Central Division with 110 points, three better than the third-place Avalanche, won all three games played between the teams by a combined score of 17-4, and have home-ice advantage, Colorado was listed as a slight favourite on most betting sites.
It would seem this is what happens when one team has Nathan MacKinnon (140 points), Mikko Rantanen (104 points) and Cale Makar (90 points), and the other does not. It’s what happens when one team won the Stanley Cup two years ago and the other has never captured hockey’s holy grail.
Of course, none of those things change the fact that the Jets were the more well-rounded team this year, had the best defensive numbers in the NHL and have the best goaltending in the league.
The Avalanche players certainly don’t see themselves having an advantage simply because they have a few high-scoring, dominant players.
“The Jets are stingy,” Manson said. “They’re a good enough offensive team but they’re an even better defensive team where they keep pucks out of the net. For us, we need to match that. We have offence in this group but it’s one of those back-and-forth battles where we’ve got to deny their offence more than they’re going to deny ours.”
The Avalanche have plenty of belief that they can do just that. Having won the Cup recently, they understand the importance of team defence. They haven’t practised it particularly well this season, but they know what they have to do.
The biggest thing is if they’re a stingy team and don’t give up a lot of goals, we also have to play the same way,” Avalanche head coach Jared Bednar said.
“We have to be a good defensive club against them. It’s an area of our game where we’ve been really good at times and struggled at other times, and our results are directly correlated with our defending details. Our guys understand it. We’re ready to play a 200-foot game and are prepared for a tough series and that basically kind of sums up our messaging to our team.