Golden Knights buck overwhelming trend to rally for Game 2 win

There were some pretty overwhelming numbers that suggested Game 2 was all but over once the Colorado Avalanche got to the second intermission with a 1-0 lead over the Vegas Golden Knights at Ball Arena in Denver.

The Golden Knights didn’t seem to care, and they have a 2-0 lead in the best-of-seven Western Conference Final to show for it after rallying for a 3-1 win on Friday night.

Colorado was 45-0-0 this season when leading after the second period. The Avalanche picked a very inopportune time to lose for the first time in that situation, surrendering goals to Jack Eichel and Ivan Barbashev just 2:07 apart in the third period before Barbashev’s empty-netter sealed the deal.

“Obviously, we’re very comfortable in the third period,” Knights defenseman Noah Hanifin said. “All year we’ve had a lot of comebacks. I thought we had a good game. We knew they were going to push tonight after the last game. I thought we handled it well and stayed composed and had a great third period. Definitely something to build off, so we have to take advantage of home ice now.”

While the Knights were tied for second in the league with 10 third-period comebacks in the regular season, doing it on the road against the Avalanche is a tall order.

Especially in the dramatic way in which it happened.

“We played simple,” Barbashev said. “We’ve been a really good third period team all season long. We’ve had a lot of comebacks. We just stuck with it.”

It’s the second-fastest two goals in a conference final or semifinal game in team history and led to the franchise-best fourth third-period comeback win this postseason, the most in the league.

The only time a Knights player has scored a later goal than Barbashev (51:22) to give them the lead in a conference final or semifinal game was Reilly Smith at 53:02 in Game 4 of the 2018 Western Conference Final against Winnipeg.

Barbashev and Smith are the only Knights to ever score two go-ahead goals in the final 10 minutes of a playoff game.

But the rally may never have happened had the Knights not found a way to stay close despite struggling a bit in the middle frame.

“I thought a key part of the game was going through a real struggle in the second period, but we still found a way to get into the locker room down just 1-0,” coach John Tortorella said. “I thought that was a key part in the game. We felt we were in a good spot going to the third, just down a goal.”

Colorado’s dominance with the lead this season wasn’t just limited to third periods.

The Avalanche were 42-2-6 when scoring first in any game, including 5-0 in the playoffs. They were also 30-0-4 when leading after the first period.

Those trends were all blown up on Friday night.

Avalanche coach Jared Bednar felt their biggest sin was failing to tack on to their advantage despite several chances to do so. He particularly lamented multiple opportunities during four-on-four play where Colorado missed the net completely.

“We had chances to extend the lead to 2-0,” he said. “Then you look at their two chances and Eichel puts it in the net and Barbashev puts it in the net. It’s a fine margin for error.”

Now Bednar’s team must overcome some overwhelming numbers on the other side should they want to rally to win the series.

The franchise is 3-6 all-time when dropping the first two games of the series and have only rallied to win once when falling behind 2-0 at home.

Only the 1945 Detroit Red Wings have rallied to win a conference finals or league semifinals series after dropping the first two games at home in a best-of-seven series. All other teams are 0-20 in that situation.

No team has done so under the current format, which began in 1982 with teams 0-13 in that span.

The analytics site Moneypuck.com currently gives the Knights a 78.7 percent chance to win the series and a 25.3 percent chance to sweep the series.