TORONTO — Seven hours before his current club took the ice against the one with whom his NHL journey began, Nazem Kadri was reminded of his recent string of ill fortune against the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Dating back years, the 2009 Maple Leafs seventh-overall pick had lost nine straight games against his former club, some of those coming in a Colorado Avalanche sweater, some coming in Calgary Flames colours. The 36-year-old sorted through the statistic’s validity amid a crowd of reporters in Scotiabank Arena’s visiting locker room Tuesday morning, before eventually relenting.
“That really means nothing to me,” he finally said with a chuckle. “Every day is a great day to come here. It’s a fresh slate. We’re looking to go 1-0 today.”
By the time the final buzzer had sounded on the night, the former Leaf had gotten his wish, his Avs taking down the Maple Leafs with a 6-3 win that balanced the scales after Toronto beat them by the same score back in Denver last month.
And No. 91 was pivotal to the effort.
Thrown onto a new line a few games ago alongside captain Gabriel Landeskog and fellow former Leaf Nicolas Roy — who was traded to Colorado in March for a pair of picks after 59 games in blue and white — Kadri and his new mates wound up the crucial ice-tilters Tuesday night.
It started late in the first period for the trio. The Maple Leafs had shot out to a 1-0 lead courtesy of Darren Raddysh, before Brock Nelson tied it up for the Avs late in the frame. A minute after that levelling goal, Kadri picked up the puck and pressed into the Maple Leafs’ end, kicking off an offensive-zone cycle.
Cale Makar fed it around the endboards to Roy. The forward drifted as if pushing out to the point, then cut back, darted down the left wing, dropped his shoulder and bulldozed his way through the net front — amid the chaos, the puck landed in the crease just ahead of Landeskog. The captain dove in, backhanded it up and over Sergei Bobrovsky, and fluttered the twine.
A pivotal go-ahead goal, but more importantly, a sign of just how effective Colorado’s new second-line trio can be.
“Three big bodies that should be able to hang onto the puck, earn our cycle and get to the net,” Landeskog said of how he sees the new combination. “I think that should be our game. Tough to play against.”
Before the night was through, the trio was called on to breathe life into the Avs’ attack once again.
Heading into the middle of the tilt with a 3-1 lead, the visitors saw their advantage evaporate courtesy of a pair of standout efforts from Easton Cowan and Jack Roslovic, the latter goal tying things up three minutes into the third period.
Once again, Landeskog and co. came over the boards looking to swing the momentum, to come up with another quickfire strike to tilt the ice.
And once again, they started with some blue-collar work down low in the Maple Leafs’ zone, cycling the puck through Toronto’s end, looking for their moment. Eventually, the puck came to Kadri behind the Maple Leafs' net — the centreman spun, took a breath and, granted space to line up a perfect pass, sent a precision dish through the crease to a waiting Landeskog, who tucked home his second of the night.
“That was beautiful,” the captain said after the dust had settled on the hard-earned road win. “There wasn’t much I had to do. I mean, I just kind of stopped back-post, coverage left me, and Naz just made a great play.”
The line’s second tally of the night wound up the game-winner. Colorado tacked on another goal late in the third and an empty-netter to ice it once and for all. The win gives Colorado two straight victories, and five in their last seven after some up-and-down play to start their campaign.
And a sense that the pieces are falling into place up front.
“We’ve been talking to them a lot about an identity,” head coach Jared Bednar said of the new-look line after Tuesday’s win. “Like, what is the identity? For me, all three of those guys can be highly competitive, strong on pucks — they give you a second and third effort to keep pucks alive. The strength of their game should be below the tops of the circle in the offensive zone, while being a responsible team. I think that’s what you saw on both their goals, right? A couple counterflows from Roy, bring it hard to the net, and they bang it in. They kept that puck alive two or three times down below the goal line, netfront, in the corners, and then Landeskog picks up the next goal.
“That’s what they should look like. That’s what we want it to look like. It’s hard to play against, for another team’s top line. … We’ll just keep building that identity with those guys, and hopefully it turns into a real good line for us, like it was tonight.”
That it was the club’s stoic captain who pulled the team out of the mud on this night was no surprise to the veteran coach. Amid an uneven start to the campaign that’s had these Avs looking for more consistency, their goal not just a quality regular season but a Stanley Cup ring at the end of it, the leadership from No. 92 has been pivotal. Not just on the ice, but away from the lights, too.
It’s at the core of why this Avalanche team remains a squad scribbled into Stanley Cup Final predictions year after year.
“It starts with him,” Bednar said of the Swedish veteran late Tuesday night. “But there’s a lot of those guys. Nate (MacKinnon), Cale (Makar) — some of these guys, we’ve been together for a long time. … They’re all really good leaders that want to win. They have a good knack for sending the right message at the right time. If I need to help guide them and direct them I do that, but I try to leave the bulk of that to those guys on their own. They get what they get out of my meetings and then they can send the follow-up message afterwards.
“And they’ve been good at it. That’s why our team’s been so good. I think leadership has a lot to do with it.”
