Avs-Kings Game 1 Studs & Duds

The Colorado Avalanche toppled the Los Angeles Kings in a decisive 4-1 victory in Game 1 of the 2025-26 NHL season. There’s plenty to discuss, so let’s get into it.

Studs

Colorado’s top line…offensively

It took a little bit for the Artturi Lehkonen-Nathan MacKinnon-Martin Necas engine to get fired up, but once it did, it was predictably a problem for the Kings the rest of the way. This trio combined for six points and three of Colorado‘s goals, two from Necas. We know this line worked so well last year and we saw again why it clicks so well. MacKinnon and Necas bring the sizzle with their explosive skating and high-end puck skill and Lehkonen brings the nonstop motor.

There’s no reason Lehkonen should be as effective as he is, but he makes his living outworking the opposition and that’s exactly what he did on his goal last night. He’s engaged in a 1v1 in front of Darcy Kuemper and Lehkonen gained territorial control, giving him the inside line on the rebound off Cale Makar‘s shot. It’s just good, hard-nosed quality hockey from Lehkonen.

The line was Colorado’s most explosive on offense, as they led the way with seven of the 16 scoring chances the Avs generated at 5v5. They had four of the seven high-danger chances and dwarfed any of the other lines in expected goals creation. Rinse and repeat 81 more times because these fellas are a problem.

Devon Toews

This guy is such a sneaky demon. Look at the way he kick-starts the first goal of the game with a perfect pass.

So much patience and then he makes the right read and executes it. It isn’t sexy, but it’s what good hockey looks like. From there, I put together a small collection of plays where you see how disruptive he is defensively. He doesn’t make big hits and he doesn’t have the dash of panache you get from Makar, but this is just so quietly effective throughout the game.

The master of the simple play.

Scott Wedgewood

Wedgewood played 59:52 of the 60-minute game and did pretty well for himself. The Avs were solid defensively, allowing only 25 shots on goal, but seven of LA’s 11 high-danger chances ended up on net. Wedgewood stopped all seven.

The only goal he allowed was on the extended 5v3 in the third period as the Avs turned their focus in the game from gaining two points to trying to beat up Kings defenseman Brandt Clarke thanks to his repeated cross-checks. The goal allowed was a perfect shot from Kevin Fiala and it made the game 4-1 late in the third period.

It sucked to see Wedgewood lose his shutout because he played very well but he put up sparkling numbers with only one goal allowed versus the 2.64 expected goals the Kings produced. It wasn’t hard to think about Wedgewood making the handful of big saves in direct contrast to opening night last year, when the Avs surrendered eight goals and there was a semi-serious conversation about whether or not “Empty Net” would be a more effective goal deterrent than Alexandar Georgiev was.

And Wedgewood is the backup? Feels good, man.

Duds

Colorado’s top line…defensively

As good as that line is with the puck, they struggle without it. If you’re trying to make the best argument to split MacKinnon and Necas up, it’s the conversation surrounding their defensive work. Neither are good players in their own zone and as solid as Lehkonen is, there’s only so much he can do from the left wing.

In the 12:07 of 5v5 time together, this line allowed 18 shot attempts, seven scoring chances, and five high-danger chances. The other three lines only allowed one high-danger chance combined so, ahhh, you know, maybe this line needs to tighten the screws up a bit. It was especially frustrating because it wasn’t like the strong top portion of the Kings forward corps is what beat them up, but rather the third line of Los Angeles that was able to create so much heat.

What is funny about this is that MacKinnon actually made two wonderful defensive plays in the same game. That may not happen the rest of the regular season.

The power play

This unit finished with one goal on six tries, though the sixth was mostly the Avs running out the clock in the final three minutes with the score at 4-1. They weren’t really trying to score much at that point, but that doesn’t erase the other four attempts they had where they failed to score.

They struggled to generate much of any kind of offense at all. In 10:05 of power-play time, the Avs generated:

• Shot attempts: 10
• Shots on goal: 5
• Scoring chances: 3
• High-danger chances: 2

In half of the ice time, the Kings’ power play (only the 5v4 portion) matched all but the shot attempts and they still had eight. Hell, if the Avs produced those numbers in 10 minutes of 5v5 play, it would be underwhelming. In over half of a period with an extra player on the ice, the Avs generated offense like a bad 5v5 team. We knew it was likely to be a clunky transition with new assistant coach Dave Hakstol running the unit, but this didn’t inspire a ton of confidence.

Avs Unsung Hero

Brock Nelson

If you’re unfamiliar with this space, I typically like to include a guy who had some good and bad mixed into their game but still found a way to have a material impact on the outcome. Enter Nelson, who was second on the Avs in ice time (behind Lehkonen??) with 23:15 played. I was curious so I looked under the hood a bit more and here was Nelson’s TOI breakdown:

• Even strength: 12:01
• Power play: 7:45
• Short-handed: 3:29

That is a lot of ice time in a lot of situations.

One area Nelson is absolutely going to have to improve is in the faceoff circle. He won just 4 of 17 draws, including going 1/7 in the offensive zone and 1/6 in the defensive zone. That is not going to work if you’re getting that kind of workload. There should never be a game where Nelson and Gavin Brindley, the 5’8″ rookie winger, win the same number of faceoffs in the defensive zone.

Anyway, Nelson’s line (alongside Val Nichushkin and Gabe Landeskog) at 5v5 was also Colorado’s most efficient, as they allowed only one scoring chance in 8:19 of 5v5 time together. That was the best line for the Avs in the first period and while it cooled a bit as the game went on, it was very encouraging to see the Nelson line have zero problems going head-to-head against Anze Kopitar. If they’re going to generate consistent offense against a defensive center of that caliber, the Avs are going to be in very good shape.

Oh, also, Nelson got an assist on the only offensive faceoff he won in the game, so that feels like proof of concept that he should do that more often.