Hockey, like most facets of life I suppose, is built on some time-worn cliches that get us through things like game recaps. They become cliches, however, because at the core is almost always some level of truth found in there. One of hockey’s great truths is that you’re never in trouble in a playoff series until you lose a home…...

Given his team is 5-0 in the postseason for the second straight season, there’s a sneaky amount of pressure on Colorado Avalanche head coach Jared Bednar right now. It’s not the kind of pressure that results in a coach losing his job (if that was ever even a possibility, it ended with the tidy sweep of the Predators), but with…...

Let’s start this Round 2 preview between the Colorado Avalanche and St. Louis Blues by establishing something that I think is important: This is not last year and the regular-season meetings between these two teams do not matter. There might be plenty of optimism about the Avs-Blues matchup in Colorado, but last year’s sweep of the Blues in Round 1…...

Well, Calgary Flames head coach Darryl Sutter gave everyone an amusing soundbite when he mentioned being a wild card team would be “a waste of eight days.” Turns out, the Avs only needed seven. Upon getting their fourth sweep in Avalanche history and second in as many years, the Avs are off to the second round for the fourth consecutive…...

The Colorado Avalanche blew out the Nashville Predators 7-2 in Game 1 of the playoff series last night to give the Avs the early edge. There’s lots of hockey left, of course, but Colorado’s dominant five-goal first period ended the game before the Predators even really had a chance to sink their teeth into the contest. One of the areas…...

“Can Nashville summon their very best often enough in a best-of-seven to steal the series from the heavy favorite Avalanche? It’s a very tall mountain to climb, and, well, this is the Avalanche. The mountain just might come down on top of them before they can get there.” That’s how I finished my deep-dive series preview between the Nashville Predators…...

Last night was pretty fun, eh? With the first night of the Stanley Cup Playoffs in the books, it’s time for the Colorado Avalanche to continue their journey. A team full of expectations and with an excellent roster top to bottom, Colorado is a heavy favorite in the first-round series that begins today against Central Division rival Nashville. The Avalanche…...

The regular season is over and the road to the Stanley Cup is set for the Colorado Avalanche. They open up in Round 1 as the number one seed out west, taking on a Nashville Predators team that sputtered a bit coming into the postseason as they blew a four-goal lead against the Arizona Coyotes in the final game of…...

The story of Valeri Nichushkin’s odyssey through the NHL is pretty well-worn territory by this point. When he landed in Colorado late in the offseason after being bought out by Dallas, he was coming off a season where he scored zero goals and just 10 assists in 57 games. It wasn’t even like the Stars weren’t playing him. 57 games…...

Going into the third period with the score still sitting at 0-0, the Colorado Avalanche had to feel pretty good about their chances to end their three-game losing skid and beat the Winnipeg Jets to salvage something from what had been a nightmare of a road trip to that point. The Avs had been outplayed through two periods but had…...

Depth is really important in the NHL, but I would venture a guess that on at least seven out of every 10 games that an NHL team plays, the results will follow how a team’s best players do. In tonight’s 6-3 loss to the Edmonton Oilers, we saw Colorado’s best players fail to really show up and impact the game…...

We knew the Colorado Avalanche were going to struggle with a bout against complacency in the final two weeks of the regular season after clinching both the division title and top seed in the conference last weekend. What we’ve seen since that surprisingly scintillating win over Carolina is a Colorado team that has shifted into the mindset of making sure…...

Nicolas Aube-Kubel – B My problem with NAK has too often been his biggest contribution being in the first period and then he just does nothing. Not the case tonight. I really liked his game throughout and his physicality showed why he is a legitimate option for the lineup in the postseason. He can handle that kind of game. Andre…...

Nicolas Aube-Kubel – D I don’t really have much on NAK tonight. It was a quiet night but when you spend the entire game in your own zone defending, it’s tough to make too much of a mark, I suppose. Andre Burakovsky – C I really liked Burakovsky last night but tonight was really all the bad stuff in his…...

You already know the platitudes I’m going to throw at you after tonight’s gutsy 2-1 win in the shootout by the Avalanche over the Edmonton Oilers. On the second night of a back-to-back in which they flew in from Winnipeg following their overtime tilt last night to play a rested team in their own barn who needs the points in…...

Nicolas Aube-Kubel – C- Giving him the slight bump for his goal despite it being as lucky as it was. He seems to do all of his damage early in games and then totally disappear. Some of that is usage, of course, but it’s interesting the way he fades during games. Andre Burakovsky – A A goal and an assist.…...

It’s that time of year where I’m not really sure what to make of games as the Avalanche are clearly in cruise control to a second straight division title and maybe even another President’s Trophy (Florida has decided to stop losing at all costs, though, so we’ll see how that race shapes up) and are taking the last-gasp shots from…...

Knowing they have a very busy summer ahead with some big decisions on the table, the Avalanche got their second piece of business done yesterday when they announced that Kurtis MacDermid had re-signed for two more years. The contract comes in at two years, $1.975M, which breaks down to an AAV of $987,500 per year. The 28-year-old utility player was…...

As the Avalanche was locking down a 6-4 win over the Pittsburgh Penguins to secure their berth into the postseason, I couldn’t help but think about the team they share Ball Arena with, the Denver Nuggets. You see, the Nuggets are having a pretty respectable season with a potential back-to-back MVP in Nikola Jokic and he’s lived up to every…...