The Colorado Avalanche took four penalties in the second period, and it ended up being the difference in the game, according to their head coach.
He didn’t agree with all of the penalty calls, however.
In his first game back from injury, Darren Helm got into a tussle behind the Avalanche net with Sidney Crosby. Helm was given the extra two minutes, sending the Avalanche to the penalty kill.
Neither Helm nor Bednar agreed with the call, and the Avalanche coach didn’t like the explanation he got either.
Take a look at what Helm had to say in his first game back in over two months, and read what Bednar said after a 5-2 loss to Pittsburgh.
Bednar on the second period:
“Penalties. Yeah, I mean, we had four straight penalty kills in the second period. Tough to get your game going, keep shots off the board. That’s the difference in the hockey game. Second period, we’re getting called for penalties. No question, we took some of them, and spent too much time in the box. The game was won and lost in the second period.”
Bednar on if he disagreed with Helm getting the extra two minutes after a battle with Crosby:
“Yeah (even it up), or call nothing, nothing at all. It’s two strong, veteran players battling. Apparently, we had the first one, they got one following that on a cross-check and then we got another one for pinning a guy to the boards in a scrum. It didn’t make sense to me. I asked for an explanation, got a little bit different explanation the second time around, but still doesn’t make sense to me. I’ve watched it over and over.”
Bednar on his teams response to the Penguins desperation:
“Depends on which part of the game you look at. Loved our first period, I thought we should have been up one or two after the first. I didn’t like the way we got stubborn in the second period, and moving forward a little bit in the third period with the puck. They did a nice job standing their line on our rush attack and their rush coverage. And it looked like we kept trying to pick our way through. If you look at our first goal we got, we just laid it in and went to work on the forecheck. Turned a puck over, bang-bang it was in the back of the net, but we didn’t do it enough. You’ve got to trust our guys skill and their ability to make plays off the rush but when it’s not working, I thought we could have turned the page a little bit earlier to look to get on the attack using our legs on the forecheck.”
Bednar on Newhook’s jump to the second line:
“Yeah, I thought he was okay. I didn’t think a lot of our lines got a big rhythm going in the second and third.”
Bednar on if he got two different explanations from the officials on Helm’s penalty:
“Yeah, I felt like it. The first explanation I got, he couldn’t really give me a story on why we were short, except that we were short. The second one, they got together after the intermission and maybe looked at it, and I looked at it. We just didn’t draw the same conclusion.”
Bednar on if he relayed to his team, before the game, the importance of the game:
“We talked about it tonight. It’s a big moment for our team, right? We have a chance to go first in the division, so we knew they were going to play with urgency. I didn’t feel like there’s any reason why we couldn’t either. There’s advantages to finishing first, you know? That’s what we’re trying to track down. It’s an opportunity for us tonight. We didn’t get it done. Hopefully we get another one.”
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