Avalanche fans showed before Game 5 against St. Louis Blues that they had Nazem Kadri’s back. “It doesn’t take much to be a decent person.”

Ross Pounders hasn’t lost faith. A little sleep, maybe. But not faith.

“For me, it’s playoff hockey — it happens,” Pounders, an Avs fan from Castle Rock, said after watching Colorado fall 5-4 in overtime to St. Louis at Ball Arena Wednesday night.  “Being up 3-0 (and losing the lead) was a bit of a shocker.”

Shock was the dominant emotion after the game at Brooklyn’s, the sports bar across the street from the arena where Pounders stopped in for a postgame bite.

That was understandable after Colorado was less than a minute away from making the Western Conference finals for the first time in 20 years.

The Avalanche still holds a 3-2 lead in the best-of-seven Western Conference semifinals, which heads back to St. Louis for a Game 6 on Friday night. But given that Colorado hasn’t advanced out of the second round of the Stanley Cup playoffs since 2002, the mood around the Ball Arena campus after Tyler Bozak’s game-winner in overtime late Wednesday evening went from a raucous swagger to a quiet, reserved confidence.

“It’s not ideal,” Avs fan Adrienne Ruth said after the game. “It really felt like the series was over and we would be putting this past us. But maybe the hockey gods felt the storybook ending in this series is in St. Louis.”

Before the Avs brought Ruth out of her seat at Ball Arena, Colorado fans brought her to tears.

“I’m blown away,” Ruth said. “I cried at warm-ups, seeing it all and seeing Naz see it.”

The “Naz” she referred to was Avalanche center Nazem Kadri, the focal point of the second-round series, on and off the ice.

Kadri collided with Blues defenseman Calle Rosen and St. Louis goaltender Jordan Binnington early in Game 3 last Saturday night at The Enterprise Center, and the resulting contact eventually injured Binnington to the point where he couldn’t return to the series.

The Avs center was peppered with threats via social media, the intensity of which necessitated heightened police security during Game 4 in the Gateway City. Colorado management even arranged extra Ball Arena staff to surround the decorative puck with Kadri’s face on it outside Ball Arena before Wednesday’s game.

Ruth, a Kadri fan, wanted to show her support, so she went to Twitter and asked her fellow Colorado faithful to print out a simple white sign and bring it to Game 5. A sign that read:

STAND WITH NAZ

During a see-saw tussle on Wednesday night, Avs fans were seen on national TV waving those signs by the thousands.

“It doesn’t take much to be a decent person,” Ruth continued, “and I’m glad that Avs faithful showed up.”

They showed up all right. By the thousands. Ready to party.

“We’ve seen the worst of some St. Louis fans and I think we’ve seen the best of our guy (Kadri),” said Matt Lahn of Denver, who came to Ball Arena dressed in a Kadri “91” sweater in honor of the Avs center.

Ryan Kulback, meanwhile, had joked with a friend during Game 4 on Monday that if Kadri notched a hat trick, he would purchase a replica sweater with the Avs center’s name and “91” on it. On Tuesday, after Kadri’s three goals, Kulback went to Ball Arena to purchase it and wore it proudly to Game 6.

“There weren’t a lot (on the rack),” the Parker resident said.

“Everything that’s been gone on for the last couple of days, it was unfortunate,” added Avs fan Walter Kealey.

Now Kadri and the Avs are going to have to find a way to respond on the road, where they’ve yet to lose in the postseason, in order to close the series out.

“To close a team out is one of the toughest things to do in hockey,” Pounders said. “I’m not too concerned about (the Avs) going into St. Louis. But it would’ve been great to close out the series here.”

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