Well, folks, we made it. The regular season is officially behind us, and what a regular season it was for the Colorado Avalanche. Now, we are staring down the emotional rollercoaster that is the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
For the first time since the 2018-2019 season, the Colorado Avalanche completed an 82-game schedule, and boy oh boy did it feel like it has dragged on for the last month or so. Part of the reason for that is the Avs really haven’t had much to play for. While they didn’t officially clinch the top spot in the West until April 16th, their lead over the rest of the conference had been so significant, that as long as the Avalanche played at a semi-competent level, they were going to cruise into 1st place in the Western Conference.
That’s exactly what they did, and that’s exactly what happened.
Now, there was a game tonight, there is plenty to talk about as the Avalanche fell 4-1 to the Minnesota Wild, and we’ll get there, but I want to take a quick second to reflect on how we ended up with a season finale that saw noticeable absences from most all of Colorado’s star players.
After an emotional, disappointing finish to last season, a lot of us expected the Avs to start this season with a bang! A sense of urgency that said, “we’re pissed off, and are here to prove everyone wrong from day 1”. Not only did that not happen, but for the first 10 games of the season the best word I can think to describe the team’s performance is “uninspired.”
They looked like the weight of their playoff loss to Vegas was still dragging them down. At the 10-game mark, we wondered if the previous season’s failure had demoralized the core to the point that they still hadn’t recovered four months later.
As it turns out, that uninspired 10-game stretch was the first opportunity for the Avalanche to prove what has made their group so special.
The season started with a myriad of injuries, new faces, and lofty expectations. All of those factors I believe contributed to the sluggish start, and the Avs had a decision to make. Were they going to hang their heads and let who they were in the past dictate who they would be in the future, or were they going to pick themselves up and change the narrative?
There’s a saying you hear a lot in sports, you have to lose before you can learn how to win. This Avalanche team has done the losing and the question is now… did they learn anything?
Ultimately that question will be answered in due time over the next two months, but following those first 10 games, the Colorado Avalanche have given you every reason to believe that they have.
Starting with the November 11th drubbing of the Vancouver Canucks, the Avalanche would go from first-month disappointment to a record-setting powerhouse in the NHL. Picking up wins in droves, the Avs would go on to set new franchise marks for wins, points, and longest home-winning streak. That doesn’t include the half-dozen or so franchise marks that were set at the individual level as well.
What made these accomplishments feel even more significant was the fact that the Avs were winning games in ways that we hadn’t seen since the glory days of the early 2000s. Physical grind-it-out wins, fast-paced skilled wins, low-scoring systematic wins, come-from-behind thrillers, pretty much any way that you could draw it up the Avs did it.
The Avalanche no longer looked like they were showing up to the rink hoping they would be able to do enough to win, but rather like they expected to win every single night. The players had set a new standard for themselves, and it’s a standard that is meant to breed not just a bunch of regular season wins, which are great, but one that is about building up a group that is prepared for anything that they may come across during a grueling playoff run.
The team made it clear throughout the season that where they finished in the standings didn’t much matter to them. They saw last year that burning yourself out trying to capture the President’s Trophy did them little good in last year’s playoffs, and were focused on building the right habits and finding consistency in their play this year so that by the time the playoffs roll around, they are as ready as they possibly can be for the difficult climb.
What all of that lead to was a huge gap between themselves and the next closest team in their division and the rest of the conference. This gave them a luxury you rarely seen the NHL. For the last two-ish weeks of the season, the Colorado Avalanche have been giving their top guys extra nights off so they can be as healthy as one can be at this point of the season.
That brings us to tonight, the regular season finale in Minnesota. Tonight, it wasn’t a player or two that head coach Jared Bednar decided to give the night off, no… it was seven players. All keys players.
When the Florida Panthers picked up a win against the Ottawa Senators on the eve of the season finales, it locked up the top spot in the NHL for the Cats, meaning the Avalanche had absolutely nothing to play for against the Minnesota Wild. The only priority was staying healthy.
If you listened to the DNVR Avalanche Pregame Show before the game started, you heard us say that we thought the game would be a snooze fest between two teams just looking to get into the postseason in one piece. At least to start the game, that was literally the exact opposite of what we got.
A flukey goal off an awkward turnaround shot from Jordan Greenway just minutes into the opening frame got things going, then it was just a parade to the penalty box. Despite the Avalanche amassing 28 penalty minutes in the first period alone, they were able to escape into intermission down just 2-0 after old friend Tyson Jost scored a goal that, if we’re all being 100% honest with ourselves, shouldn’t have counted because of a blatantly missed interference call on Minnesota, but that really doesn’t matter.
There was also a play in the first that helped you understand the decision the Avs made to leave a smattering of key guys at home. Before the 10 minute mark of the first period, Wild forward Marcus Foligno was coming up the wall out of his own zone, he tried to make a one-handed chip around Kurtis MacDermid, the two collided, and Foligno struggled to get up before being helped to the dressing room, putting little pressure on his right leg.
Macdermid was ejected from the game for a knee-on-knee hit, but looking at the replays, I haven’t seen a clean look that shows MacDermid should have been given the boot. It looked to me like an unfortunate collision.
That hit really turned the temperature up for a while, but I think both teams realized in the dressing room between the first and second period that this was not the night to get into a physical showdown.
After that, this game felt pretty much exactly how we expected it to. Both teams knew that what came next is what really mattered. The game settled down, Kirill Kaprizov would add one for Minnesota, and Nazem Kadri would breakthrough for the Avs, and that was just about all she wrote for this one. Both the Avalanche and the Wild were just kind of going through the motions after that, and given the circumstances, that was tally fine.
There really isn’t much left to say about what went down at the Xcel Energy Center Friday night, it was the ending we all expected after a historic season. Now all eyes are on the first round.
The Avalanche have had so much success throughout the season, all with the understanding that the real determining factor of how this season will be remembered is what they accomplish in the postseason.
It feels like we’ve been waiting forever to get to this moment, where they get the chance to prove that they are for real and all the winning isn’t for nothing. Like we said off the top, we hadn’t seen an 82-game season in almost three years, and everyone felt the mental fatigue near the end. But here we are, ready for the most fun, exciting, and gut-wrenching time of the year.
The waiting is over, the meaningless games are done, this is it. It’s time for the Avalanche to take every lesson they’ve learned in the last four years and put it all together to climb the mountain, and I can’t wait to watch it.
Bring on Nashville.
