MacKinnon Owns Game Four Performance: ‘I Was Bad’

The 29 year old superstar said that the Avalanche have to start focusing on the right things and not get too far ahead of themselves.

“I just think the result has to be the last thing we think about,” he said. “There’s so many things we have to do in our process and the result will come or it won’t, I guess. I think last night, I’m sure a lot of us were just thinking about just winning the game, but there’s a lot of steps before that we have to do to win the game. And regardless of who we have in the lineup, it doesn’t really change.”

One guy they didn’t have in the lineup, and will not have, is Valeri Nichushkin. I asked MacKinnon about the news yesterday, simply because we didn’t get a chance to speak to him last night, but he said he didn’t have much to say about the matter. Nichushkin’s locker at both Ball Arena and Family Sports has already been removed and replaced with another player.

The Avalanche are hoping to get Devon Toews back in the lineup. Jared Bednar said the defenseman is feeling better today and will travel with the team to Dallas.

“Hopefully he’s good to go for tomorrow,” Bednar said.

If you think Colorado is struggling with their confidence right now, you might be right. A guy like Toews would help with that, but this is clearly a team that’s a little down at the moment. When asked about the confidence level of the team, MacKinnon was pretty honest.

“I mean, it’s okay, I guess. We just lost three in a row,” he said. “Not scoring much. Just have to work ourselves out of it. I wouldn’t say it’s super high. I mean, it’s just natural when you’re not producing and scoring how we usually do and starts with us. The top players need to be a lot better. I think our depth have been really, really good this whole playoff run, so we got to get going here. And we’ll give it our all tomorrow night.”

One guy who can’t take much of the blame for Game Four is Alexandar Georgiev. If anything, that game could have been a lot worse without him in net. Dallas took it to the Avalanche early and never relented until the third period, when they sat back a fair bit.

“It’s not on him at all…he’s been great,” MacKinnon said.

The Avalanche fly out to Dallas this afternoon. I’ll be flying out to meet them tomorrow morning and will be at morning skate.