Golden Knights have opportunity to mismatch Avs amidst Makar injury
The Vegas Golden Knights and Colorado Avalanche are set to get the Western Conference Final started on Wednesday night, and a major curveball has already been thrown into the series and how it should be evaluated.
Avalanche head coach Jared Bednar announced that all-world defenseman Cale Makar will miss Game 1 and is out day-to-day with an injury.
Makar’s absence puts Bednar in a bind, as without his top defenseman, everyone else on the Colorado blue line will be asked to do more to keep the team going, which could give the Golden Knights opportunities further down their lineup to exploit some potential mismatches.
On Wednesday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, host Tyler Yaremchuk and co-host and former NHL goaltender Carter Hutton discussed why center Tomas Hertl is uniquely positioned for Vegas to get his game going with Makar sidelined.
Tyler Yaremchuk: They’re going to have to totally adjust how they handle these D-pairings, because you won’t just be able to ride essentially a top four, which is what they’ve been doing, and then sprinkling in Brent Burns here and there. It’s gonna have to be by committee. I don’t think you can just point to a Sam Malinski or point to a Brett Kulak, even though he’s a lefty and say, ‘Hey, you’re taking on the task here.’ And you know what this opens up for me? I think this opens up, you talk about Colorado’s depth and how good they’ve been, I think this is a big, big opportunity for Vegas’ depth. Remember when we had Ken Boehlke on… and he talked about how Tomas Hertl had been an absolute zero for the Vegas Golden Knights. And he was on the verge, according to Ken, of like, that’s a guy who they were gonna, should have debated healthy scratching at one point, he told us. What does Tomas Hertl do in the back couple games of that series? Scores two goals, picks up three points in the final three games. If there’s an opportunity for a mismatch now, I think it’s gonna be a guy like Hertl playing on Vegas’ third line. That can be a difference maker now, especially with how weak in this Colorado blue line is.
Carter Hutton: Yeah, and he’s a guy you have to free operate. If we’re sitting here in a, I don’t know how many days, potentially seven games, right, and Vegas makes the final, it’s gonna be that depth. It’s gonna be what Hertl can do. And then the other injury, obviously, the Mark Stone question mark, Jeremy Lauzon, his penalty kill. I think that’s what this series is gonna be highlighted at now, a big factor is going to be special teams because Colorado Avalanche’s power play has been equal with Vegas. They’ve had a better penalty kill at 86.8%, but that being said, with Makar, everything flows through him up top, right? He is a big distributor of that power play and he’s a big creator.
You can watch the full segment and the rest of the episode here…