LAS VEGAS — The best offensive team in the NHL this season scored seven goals in four games.
The team that was leading the 2026 Stanley Cup Playoffs in goals per game after two rounds — a club that scored nine times in one game against a strong defensive team three weeks ago — managed just seven in the entire Western Conference Final.
Of all the reasons why the Colorado Avalanche are no longer participating in this tournament, that is the hardest one to fathom.
“I felt like we were generating enough to create chances, doing enough things to find the back of the net a couple times, and yeah, it just comes down to one chance,” Avs star defenseman Cale Makar said. “I felt like every game in this series was like that.”
The Avs scored 298 goals in the regular season, seven more than the Carolina Hurricanes at the top of the league. They had scored 37 in nine games through the first two rounds of the postseason.
Other things went wrong while the Vegas Golden Knights completed one of the most shocking sweeps in recent NHL postseason history. Vegas won the goaltending battle in the first three games. The Avs made mistakes at critical times, which gave the Golden Knights great scoring chances.
But the offense going Arctic Circle levels of cold is the most shocking issue. Colorado hadn’t been held to fewer than eight goals in any four-game stretch since Oct. 26-Nov. 4, 2023.
“I think itap their checking game and I thought Carter Hart had an incredible series at times,” Avs coach Jared Bednar said. “Sometimes I think we did a good job. Like I said before, you’re looking at this series going into this final game, the analytics are tight, they’re close in all aspects.
“(Hart) played really well and I think their team made it super difficult to create quality looks and when we did he made the saves. That had all something to do with it.”
The Avs feeling like they were getting enough chances, but not converting them was a theme throughout the series. That was definitely true in Game 1.
Colorado finished that game with 38 shots on net. The Avs also generated 4.44 expected goals, the second-most during this postseason run, but lost 4-2.
The next three games, the Avs did not create enough chances, or generate enough expected goals. It may have felt like they did, and in relation to what Vegas was producing, it was as Bednar put it, very tight.
But, the Avs generated 6.69 expected goals in Games 2-4 combined. The individual totals were three of the four worst outputs in the 2026 playoffs for Colorado. That’s an average of 2.23 per contest.
The Avs had just six games in the regular season where they generated 2.23 expected goals or less.
Colorado shot the puck more than Vegas did in this series. The Avs even had more scoring chances, at least before Game 4. The Golden Knights had a 75-72 advantage in scoring chances over the final three games.
But getting into the dirty areas and creating the best scoring chances was a huge problem. The Avalanche generated six high-danger scoring chances in each of the final three games of this series. They had just two in the third periods of those games — both in Game 3.
“I think we were generating looks still, but we just couldn’t get them in the net,” Avs defenseman Devon Toews said. “That’s the way it goes at times. There are times in the regular season where you might go 10 games where’s it just really hard to score goals.
“We went four games here where we couldn’t quite get enough to push it over the line and push a couple of games into our column.”
The individual results from this series were as improbable as the result. Colorado had six players score 20 or more goals this season.
Nathan MacKinnon, Martin Necas, Brock Nelson, Cale Makar, Parker Kelly and Artturi Lehkonen combined for 186 goals this season. None of those six players scored a goal against the Golden Knights.
Nelson had two quality chances and set up a third during one shift in Game 4. He hit the crossbar with a chance that might have curtailed Vegas’ comeback plans in Game 3. He’s had great postseasons before with the New York Islanders.
He called this the most frustrating playoff experience of his career. He might not be alone in the Colorado locker room.
“I felt like in a couple of the games, we had our fair share of looks and they didn’t go in,” Nelson said. “Yeah, which obviously itap all the more frustrating right now.
“I mean, this one … I feel like itap going to take some time to kind of digest and process.”
