The Avalanche will face the St. Louis Blues in a Stanley Cup playoff series for the third time, and second straight.
The 2022 Western Conference semifinal series was set on Thursday night when the Blues defeated the Minnesota Wild in Game 6 of their first-round series. The Avalanche, which completed a sweep against the Nashville Predators on Monday, swept the Blues in the first round last year.
Game 1 of the Avs-Blues series will be at Ball Arena as early as Monday. The NHL will announce the schedule on Friday or Saturday.
This will be the third playoff series between the Avs and Blues. They also met in 2001 when Colorado won the Western Conference finals in five games. The Avs went on to win their second Stanley Cup by defeating the New Jersey Devils in seven games.
The Blues, the 2019 Stanley Cup champions, went 49-22-11 (109 points) in the regular season, finishing third in the Central Division and fourth in the Western Conference. Their plus-69 goals-differential was third in the conference behind Calgary (plus-85) and Colorado (plus-78).
The Avs (56-19-7), the Western Conference’s No. 1 playoff seed, were 2-1 against St. Louis. They lost the first game, the second game of the season, 5-3 on Oct. 16 at Ball Arena before winning 4-3 on Oct. 28 at St. Louis and 5-3 on April 26 in Denver.
