Given the breakout season from Sam Malinski in 2025-26, the Avs begin the offseason with a top four of Cale Makar, Devon Toews, Josh Manson and Malinski. They also have one of the best right-side depth charts in the NHL, and typically the starboard side is tougher to fill out.

The less good news is the next four guys on the depth chart are all unrestricted free agents and the Avs are still pretty tight on salary cap space even after trading Ross Colton. So that becomes one of Joe Sakic’s biggest challenges after returning to the general manager’s chair.

Colorado played with four right-handed defensemen for most of last season. It’s a rarity, but the Avs made it work. Right now, three of their top four are righties.

In an ideal world, the Avs will add at least two left-handed defensemen this offseason, and at least one that can regularly play top-four minutes. Doing so on a limited budget could be tricky, but trading one of the veteran forwards could also help with that endeavor.

Here’s a look at some of the options that could be available, either as UFAs or in the trade market.

Unrestricted free agents

Brett Kulak
2025-26: 1 goal, 12 points, 18:58 time on ice/contest in 83 games

Kulak was a really nice fit for the Avs after arriving in a trade from the Pittsburgh Penguins. The Avs needed a more defensive-minded defenseman and he provided that. His underlying numbers in the regular season, particularly before arriving in Denver, were not great. And he’ll be 33 years old in January. He’d be a solid fit for this team as the No. 5 guy, but it’s certainly plausible that another team would be willing to pay him more if he gets to July 1.

Brent Burns
2025-26: 12 goals, 35 points, 18:52 in 82 games

Does he want to play another year? Does he want to stay in Denver? Do the Avs want to bring him back? Burns repeatedly said he wasn’t thinking beyond this year during this past season, but he certainly looked like a player who has at least one more year of competent hockey in him. Given the Avs’ cap issues, bringing him back on another one-year deal with incentives that can be pushed to the 2027-28 cap if needed does make some sense. Will they want to have four righties in the top six again?

Jack Ahcan
2025-26: 0 goals, 2 points, 11:32 in 11 games

Feels like an obvious match, particularly if he’d accept another two-way contract. Not sure he’d find a one-way deal on the open market, but he’s shown he can play in a limited role in the NHL. The Avs would probably be comfortable starting the season with him as the No. 7 guy, but just like this past year, they’d also very likely be looking for an NHL veteran or two ahead of the deadline for more insurance.

Nick Blankenburg
2025-26: 8 goals, 24 points, 16:48 in 61 games

Blankenburg’s pre-Colorado numbers seem very likely to earn him a contract that doesn’t work for the Avs. It makes sense for him to look for a regular role, perhaps even as a No. 4/5 guy. The Avs are more likely to see him as a No. 6/7 guy, particularly with all the righties in front of him.

Ryan Shea
2025-26: 6 goals, 35 points, 18:53 in 80 games

Darren Raddysh just signed an 8-year, $68 million deal after one wildly successful NHL season. Shea is going to be a smaller version of that. He had 70 NHL games before last year, but was a very solid second-pairing guy for a playoff team. The offense was definitely helped by Pittsburgh shooting better than 13% when he was on the ice at 5-on-5. He’s a medium-sized lefty who is a strong penalty killer and he doesn’t turn 30 until midseason. He is also probably the best lefty on the market right now.

Jeremy Lauzon
2025-26: 1 goal, 13 points, 17:11 in 68 games

Lauzon could be an alternative to Kulak, if he finds greener pastures elsewhere. Not as dependable from an availability standpoint in recent years, but Lauzon would add size (6-foot-3, 225 pounds) and defensive solidity. He’d fit better as the No. 3 guy on the left side, if possible. He could give Jared Bednar the option of a true shutdown pairing with Manson, or an offense-defense duo with Malinski.

Mike Reilly
2025-26: 1 goal, 9 points, 14:58 in 42 games

Reilly has had solid underlying numbers for years, but he’s also played only 60 games over the past two seasons. He’s listed at 6-foot-2, can play both sides and handles sheltered minutes quite well. He played 42 games for the Carolina Hurricanes this season, but only twice during the club’s title run. He could be that type of player for the Avs — a regular for much of the season in a third-pairing role, then potentially the No. 7 come playoff time if they add another defenseman before the trade deadline.

Carson Soucy
2025-26: 5 goals, 12 points, 16:31 in 76 games

Soucy is very tall, at 6-foot-5. He had a solid start to his season with the New York Rangers. Most of his underlying numbers were pretty similar with the New York Islanders, but the latter was outscored 21-10 with him on the ice at 5-on-5 in just 30 games. The Isles collapsed near the end of the season. Other front offices will need to do their homework to understand what went wrong there. He should be a No. 6 on the Avs, but might get paid to be more elsewhere.

Vincent Desharnais
2025-26: 1 goal, 7 points, 18:11 in 53 games

Desharnais is very tall (6-foot-7) and offers almost no offense. But he’s also a better defensive player than a couple of the other size XL defensemen in this market. He is right-handed, so he’d only be an option if Burns doesn’t return and the Avs are OK with rolling out four righties at times again next year.

Colton White
2025-26: 0 goals, 4 points, 12:15 in 23 games

White is a medium-sized guy (6-foot-1, 187 pounds) who can move the puck and hold his own in sheltered minutes. Now that he’s 29 years old, getting a full-time gig might never happen. But as a potential No. 7, he could be a solid depth addition. The Avs could do worse than White/Ahcan as their No. 7/8 defensemen.

Trade market

Bowen Byram/Morgan Rielly

Here are the two best left-handed defensemen whose names are squarely in the trade market discussion. It’s hard to see a reunion with Byram. Samuel Girard is gone, but the top-two guys — and a blocked path to the power play — are still here. Rielly is an offense-first guy that doesn’t really fit what the Avs need, given both the acquisition cost and his cap number.

Pavel Mintyukov/Olen Zellweger

The Anaheim Ducks have about $43 million in cap space this summer, and basically an entire defense corps behind Jackson Lacombe to re-sign or rebuild. Any of all of the old guys (John Carlson, Jacob Trouba, Radko Gudas) could leave, but the Ducks could also move one of their young RFAs — Mintyukov or Zellweger — if the negotiations don’t go well or the available space starts to dry up (Leo Carlsson and Cutter Gauthier also need new contracts).

Jonas Siegenthaler
2025-26: 0 goals, 16 points, 19:29 in 82 games

Siegenthaler has been a bit up and down with the New Jersey Devils, but when he’s in form, he’s a solid defense-only guy on a very reasonable contract — two years left with a $3.4 million cap hit. The Devils have a new GM, and a bit of a logjam in the defense corps.

Mason Lohrei
2025-26: 7 goals, 26 points, 16:54 in 73 games

Lohrei is a 6-foot-5 defenseman with some offensive acumen who turns 26 in January. His future value lies in the answer to one question: What improvements did he actually make on the defensive side of things last season? Two seasons ago, the Boston Bruins were outscored 72-52 with Lohrei on the ice at 5-on-5. This past season, with very similar underlying numbers, Boston outscored foes 47-30. Whether or not he’s an intriguing trade target, or why the Bruins might be willing to move him, is somewhere in the answer to that question.

FOOTNOTES: The Avs announced their four-game preseason schedule Monday. It is reduced from the typical six or seven in years’ past because the NHL is moving to an 84-game regular season in 2026-27. Colorado will play Utah at home on Sept. 20 and Winnipeg at Ball Arena on Sept. 25. The Avs will travel to Manitoba to face the Jets on Sept. 21 and to Salt Lake City to play the Mammoth on Sept. 26.

Whatever level of patience and stability Joe Sakic truly believes the Colorado Avalanche need this offseason, he’s got some work to do with the defense corps.

There could be some interesting decisions with the forwards, while the goaltending is the most likely group to look exactly the same on opening night as it does today. The blue line could generate a bunch of headlines in the next few weeks, though.

“There’s always changes, but we have the core guys here,” Sakic said at his year-end press conference. “We have a nucleus. We’re a deep team. We feel we’re strong in all the positions. Obviously, we have some UFAs that we’re going to try and sign to keep the group together, but it’s a great group.

“They care about each other. They want to win. They’re very competitive. They’re disappointed, but their expectations are to try and come back and try and compete and win a Stanley Cup.”

Two of the team’s three key free agents are part of the defense corps, and there are depth concerns as well.

What just happened

When fully healthy, the Avs defense corps was arguably the league’s best in 2025-26. Cale Makar finished second in the Norris Trophy voting despite his lowest per-game offensive output since 2020-21. The start of Devon Toews’ year wasn’t at his best, but he had a strong finish after the Olympic break and into the postseason.

Sam Malinski was one of the breakout players of the entire NHL, earned a new contract and was playing like a No. 3 defenseman at his peak. He wasn’t near the new standard he set in the Western Conference Final, and was widely believed to be playing through a compromising injury after missing two games in the second round.

Josh Manson missed four games in the playoffs, but otherwise filled his role as the club’s most physical defenseman while collecting the second-most points of his career. Brent Burns played every game like always, was a hit in the dressing room and showed he can still play even past his 41st birthday.

The addition of Brett Kulak as a steady, defense-first guy at the trade deadline was a success, even if the price tag on the day of the trade seemed a bit steep.

Former GM Chris MacFarland admitted that he tried to add three defensemen ahead of the deadline, not just Kulak and Nick Blankenburg — a sign that Colorado knew the depth of its defense during a long playoff run could be an issue. Blankenburg played to mixed results as the No. 7 guy, and Jack Ahcan ended up getting three of the eight games available because of injuries to the top six.

What����ap next

The top priority is a new contract for Makar, who can be a UFA in July 2027. He’s eligible to sign July 1, and Sakic made it clear the Avs expect to get a deal done this summer.

But there are a lot of moves to make to build out the defense corps for next season as well. Makar, Toews, Malinski and Manson are a great foundation to build from, but the next four guys — Kulak, Burns, Blankenburg and Ahcan — are all unrestricted free agents.

The Avs are currently short on salary cap space, so one or more of the forwards could be on the move to help allocate more resources to the blue line.

Does Burns want to keep playing and do the Avs want another year with him? He can break the NHL’s ironman record next year if he continues. A similar deal to this past year — $1 million in salary with bonuses makes sense, whether that is in Denver or elsewhere.

What could Kulak get on the open market? Hint: Probably a lot. There is a strong argument that Kulak would be the No. 1 left-handed defenseman on the market, and one of the 3-5 best overall.

That leads to the next big question: Can the Avs find more balance after entering the 2026 playoffs with five righties in their top seven?

Lining up Manson and Malinski (or flip them) down the right side behind Makar is excellent, particularly if Malinski is able to retain or even build on the gains he made this past season. But the Avs need to fill out the LHD side of the depth chart. Manson and Burns worked together, but Colorado needs more lefties.

Trading Samuel Girard for a guy in the last year of his contract (Kulak) created this conundrum, but if the Avs can’t sign Kulak, they’ll be looking for a similar-style player to replace him. In an ideal world, Sakic can land a young-ish left-handed defenseman who is capable of playing on the second pairing now and possibly be the heir to Toews as the club’s No. 2 guy as he ages.

Will the Avs be able to count on any help from the Eagles? There are a couple of guys with potential to be depth options for them next season, beyond just bringing Ahcan and/or Blankenburg back.

The Avs are clearly intrigued by Alex Gagne, a 6-foot-5 lefty who was a college free agent from New Hampshire and became a solid contributor for the Eagles in his first pro season. He’ll be 24 in August. Then there is University of Denver alum Sean Behrens, who missed all of two years ago with a knee injury and just completed his first healthy pro campaign.

It’s hard to see Colorado wanting to break camp with one of those guys in the lineup, but maybe one of them can work his way up the depth chart to the No. 6 or 7 spot over the course of next season. Behrens’ size will work against him, but his smarts could help him find a depth role.

It could take some creativity, but the Avs will likely sign or trade for at least three defensemen, if not more, between now and training camp. And that’s not counting a potential mega-deal for Makar, which will help shape the salary cap puzzle for 2027-28 and beyond.

Future depth chart

^ Unrestricted free agent on July 1; * UFA in 2027; + Restricted free agent in 2027

Sakic was back in front of the assembled Colorado Avalanche media Thursday. MacFarland is gone, off to pilot his own franchise and what was old is new again in the Avs front office.

The message was similar, even if Sakic’s role has now changed. He sat next to Kroenke Sports & Entertainment vice-chairman Josh Kroenke this time, but belief in the Avalanche players and coaches was again a central theme.

“It’s disappointing. It stings,” said Sakic, now the president and general manager of the Avs with MacFarland in Nashville. “But we’ve got a great hockey team here, and this team was built for a 2-3 year run. We still got most of the guys coming back, and their expectations, our expectations, I know the fans’ expectations, is to try and win a (Stanley) Cup.

“And we’re hopefully going to accomplish that next year, but it really was, overall, an incredibly fun year.”

Colorado ran the league for more than six months, leading the NHL standings from Nov.  1 through the conclusion of the regular season. The Avs rolled past Los Angeles and Minnesota to reach the second half of the postseason tournament for the first time since 2022.

But the Avalanche express derailed at full speed, a stunning, fiery crash of a four-game sweep by the Vegas Golden Knights in the Western Conference Final. MacFarland is gone, but Sakic and Kroenke preached belief in the group and continuity throughout a nearly 30-minute press conference.

Sticking with Bednar

Not only will Jared Bednar return for an 11th season as head coach, but his assistants will also return. Bednar is entering the final year of his contract, but Sakic alluded to a potential extension coming later in the offseason.

“We haven’t thought about [that]. Right now, the priority is getting through the draft, free agency,” Sakic said. “Try and make our team as good as possible going into the summer. The rest of the stuff we will push that down the line. We’ll figure out later in the summer on all that stuff, but I don’t think he’s worried about it. He shouldn’t be worried about it. The contracts will come when they come.”

When asked why Bednar is returning, compared with title-winning coach Mike Malone, who was fired from the KSE-owned Denver Nuggets late in the 2024-25 season, Kroenke was succinct.

“I think he has absolute belief of the dressing room,” Kroenke said.

Sakic is now the GM of this franchise, and there is no acting or interim qualification. The structure from the past two seasons remains the same, just with MacFarland out and Sakic back in the GM chair.

While Sakic said he’s enjoyed the increased workload shifting back over the past couple of weeks, what his long-term future is and the front-office structure are still to be determined.

“I’m taking over being GM right now,” Sakic said. “We’ve got a great staff. Really confident in our group. It’s business as usual from our end. We’re going to try and, as a staff, make this team as good as possible so we can try and be a contender again.”

Colorado currently has 17 of its top 20 players from last season under contract for next year. No. 4 center Jack Drury is a restricted free agent. Two defensemen, Brett Kulak and Brent Burns, are unrestricted free agents.

The Avs do not have much room below the salary cap ceiling — a touch shy of $3 million, per PuckPedia — so just retaining those players is not an option. There is also work to be done filling out the depth beyond those 20 — extra forwards Joel Kiviranta (UFA) and Zakhar Bardakov (RFA) plus next-up defensemen Nick Blankenburg (UFA) and Jack Ahcan (UFA) all need new deals or replaced.

Sakic and Kroenke both spoke more about marginal changes than drastic ones.

“We could panic and try and blow everything up and start all over, but this team, what they’ve done over the course of the year was pretty remarkable,” Sakic said. “Now we want to give them an opportunity to try and do it again. I mean, the last two trade deadlines were meant for not just that year — to try and compete for a few years with this group and try and bring home a Stanley Cup. That’s the goal.”

Upgrades off the ice

This was the first time Kroenke spoke at an Avalanche-specific press conference since Nathan MacKinnon signed an eight-year, $100.82 million contract Sept. 20, 2022. Sakic addressed the next mega-contract Colorado expects to complete with co-franchise player Cale Makar this summer, and Kroenke had updates on a couple of other long-term franchise-building items.

One was progress on a new practice facility. The Avs currently practice at Family Sports Center in Centennial, where the team’s offices are also based. Both they and the Nuggets hope to have new spaces of their own downtown as part of KSE’s 55-acre development project around Ball Arena.

“There’s one final hurdle that we’re in,” Kroenke said. “We hope to have some information relatively soon. We’re dealing with the city, and we’re working on pedestrian access over Speer (Blvd.) in and around that. So hopefully once we are able to iron out and finalize that with the city, we’ll be able to announce something. I don’t have an exact time frame, but we’re very close.”

Another was the future of the Avalanche payroll. The NHL’s salary cap ceiling is in an era of unprecedented, rapid growth. The ceiling was $95.5 million this season, but will rise to $104 million for 2026-27 and is expected to spike to $113.5 million the following year with future, similar hikes also expected.

That has led to speculation in the NHL that far fewer franchises will be willing to spend up to or near the cap ceiling. Twelve teams, including the Avalanche, spent up to or within $1 million of the cap ceiling this year, and half the league — 16 clubs — spent more than $93 million, or within $2.5 million of the ceiling.

“I think we’ve been a cap team for how many years now?” Kroenke said. “I think with the core players that we have, we’re going to keep being as aggressive as possible. I think that some of that stuff can kind of go in cycles, but I think if you have a core of Nathan McKinnon and Cale Makar, led by Gabe Landeskog, and then the depth that we have. I think you better be pushing it, trying to go for Cups.

“I think going for Cups means you are spending as much as you can when you can, and using your resources as smartly as possible as well.”

He was positioned between the two benches as part of ESPN’s broadcast team while the Vegas Golden Knights stunningly swept the Presidents’ Trophy out of the 2026 Stanley Cup Playoffs in the Western Conference Final. It’s been a few days, but the shock of the result is still fresh.

For more than six months, the Avs set the standard in the NHL this season. Then, it was washed away in a week.

“In each of the first three games, there was a point in the game — like a significant moment — and Colorado lost all of those moments,” Ferraro told The Denver Post. “It����ap not like they lost 5-1. They were in every game, but in those big moments that were available to turn each game, they lost every one.”

So now the offseason beckons, and it has suddenly become arguably the most important one of the Nathan MacKinnon-Cale Makar era. Everything was building over the past two years, from the historic in-season overhaul two seasons ago to the high-profile additions ahead of the March trade deadline, towards a championship run this spring.

For two rounds, the Avs looked like a juggernaut. Now, there are questions everywhere.

Will this group be able to win a second championship together? What can they possibly do now, after this dream season didn’t produce a title?

“When you’re in the air Colorado is, to nudge forward it����ap a really high bar to climb over. Where they are, to improve some of the decisions are pretty minute,” Ferraro said. “You can change the system. You can change a coach. But if the top end of your roster gives you no goals, then you lose.

“To me it becomes simple, but the solutions probably aren’t simple. In my mind, it’s how would you improve a really good team? And it’s not easy.”

‘They’re not the chances you need’

As the series against the Golden Knights progressed, Colorado’s ability to create high-level chances diminished. The Avs had plenty in Game 1, but Vegas grabbed the lead and Carter Hart kept the league’s top offense at bay.

In Games 2 and 3, the Avs had more shot attempts, more shots on goals and, at least in their minds, enough quality scoring chances to win. By Game 4, the mounting injuries and frustration were too much to overcome.

After losing a series in 2025 where the Avs felt like they outplayed Dallas, is there a through line to be drawn?

“I don’t think they made the right adjustments,” said Bruce Boudreau, former coach and NHL Network analyst. “When you’re playing a team like Vegas or Carolina that clogs up the neutral zone and is very aggressive against you, you’ve got to change your tactics a little bit.

“They’re the best team in the league at coming up the ice with four guys. But when they don’t have the neutral zone ice to skate it in and make those plays, they need to figure something else out. … It����ap not easy to check, because they have some great, skilled players, but the formula is easy to check, if that makes sense.”

Boudreau was at the helm of a dynamic, electric offensive team in Washington. Those Capitals teams, led by Alex Ovechkin and Nicklas Backstrom, were young and had not won a championship. They were inundated with questions about whether they could play the right way at the crucial time of year.

This Avalanche team has won. Jared Bednar’s plan worked, and this core executed it with near-flawless precision in 2022.

But each of the past four seasons has produced an ending more agonizing than the last. The questions that are usually reserved for teams and players who haven’t done it are now resurfacing for this Avs group.

“It is a good question. I don’t know if it is a major change,” said Cory Schneider, an analyst for NHL Network and MSG Network. “Maybe just a small philosophical change of not getting stubborn. It does seem like they can get frustrated, like you can frustrate them, you can frustrate some of their top guys if you don’t give them what they want. If the other team is saying we’ll give you A, but we won’t give you B, then if we can get some good goaltending, we can frustrate you.

“I don’t think it����ap a major overhaul, but how can they find another way? It probably starts at the top with the top guys. It might be more of a mentality change than a big personnel change.”

Colorado’s top six scorers during the regular season did not score a goal against Vegas. The top guys didn’t score enough. The depth guys didn’t score enough.

“That reminds me of 2010,” Boudreau said of his Presidents’ Trophy-winning club in Washington. “We had 121 points, but then all of a sudden you run into some adversity and the power play doesn’t go, and I can see some similarities so quickly. It����ap the frustration of … this never happened to us before, so what do we do?”

Vegas found a way to stifle the Avs, just as Dallas has done the two previous years. It was excellent defense. It was great goaltending, at times.

What are some potential solutions for when this problem arises again could be the key to unlocking another title, regardless of any personnel changes that might happen.

“What can be different? Until they get in between the circles for their chances, they’re not the chances that you need,” Ferraro said. “How do you generate more Grade A chances? I think they had probably as many as Vegas. They didn’t finish as well, and they did not, in my mind, between the circles as much as Vegas did.”

‘It����ap going to be an interesting summer’

The first big domino is Bednar’s status.

The Avs pushed their end-of-season media availability to early next week. A year ago, it came three days after losing to Dallas in Game 7. The power play’s failure in that series cost assistant coach Ray Bennett his job.

Bednar is the winningest coach in franchise history. He’s the second-longest tenured coach in the NHL, behind Tampa Bay’s Jon Cooper. The Lightning have not won a single playoff round since Bednar’s Colorado team defeated them in the 2022 Cup Final, but there has been far less chatter about Cooper’s job security.

“I happen to think Bednar is really good,” Ferraro said. “He’s a really, really good coach that coaches a team that just had 121 points. If they’re letting him go, they better have a really good idea of who’s coming next.”

The other big domino is general manager Chris MacFarland. Multiple outlets have reported that Nashville wants to speak with MacFarland, who is nominated for GM of the Year. If he were to leave, that opens the door to an entirely new set of questions for this offseason.

If MacFarland stays, the biggest long-term item on the to-do list is Makar’s next contract. But, in the short term, what can or will the Avs do that will affect the 2026-27 edition of the team?

There are 17 players who appeared in at least three of the club’s 13 playoff games under contract for next season. Jack Drury is a restricted free agent. Defensemen Brett Kulak, Brent Burns, Nick Blankenburg and Jack Ahcan are all unrestricted free agents, along with forward Joel Kiviranta.

Colorado has a shade below $3 million in cap space, . That’s not enough to revamp the back half of the defense corps, not to mention a new deal for Drury and room for a 13th forward.

“I’m reading different opinions on “blow it up” and I don’t think people quite understand A) the impossibility of that and B) would you look at a team that had 121 points, or would you look at seven days?” Ferraro said. “I can almost guarantee they’re not going to have eight new players next year. That����ap not happening.”

At least one, if not two, of those 17 players under contract will need to be moved to create the cap flexibility to fill out the roster. The Avs were in a similar spot last summer. They traded Charlie Coyle and Miles Wood to Columbus.

That allowed them to sign Brent Burns, and it gave them enough breathing room below the cap ceiling to add Kulak, Nicolas Roy and Nazem Kadri before the trade deadline.

To do more than that will be its own challenge. The Avs are short on draft picks and prospects to use in trades, but there are also lots of teams with plenty of cap space who might want to add one of the Colorado veterans.

“I think it must be the most torturous and difficult task to sit there and go, ‘I think we should be patient. I don’t think we should make major moves,’ ” Ferraro said. “It must be really disappointing and really frustrating, because you’re close, and then you’re losing four games, so are you close? That’s what they’re wrestling with.”

When the season ends the way it did, it feels like everything and anything could be on the table. There were similar feelings a year ago, with a stunning Game 7 loss to Dallas still fresh in everyone’s minds.

MacFarland, along with team president Joe Sakic, preached patience then, and belief in this group. They were rewarded with the best regular season in franchise history, and an 8-1 romp through the first half of the playoffs.

But then the Western Conference Final happened. How the Avs respond will affect not only their chances of winning the Stanley Cup in 2027 but also years beyond that.

It’s an aging group. It’s also a group that just ran the league for six months. The forthcoming decisions are not going to be easy.

“It����ap going to be an interesting summer, because they’ve shown they will be aggressive,” Schneider said. “They’re similar to Vegas in that sense, where they’re not afraid to make a change. There’s no sacred cows there. If anybody was willing to pull off a pretty bold move, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was them.”

Mikko Rantanen sent his friends and former teammates home in a blur — his third-period hat trick and assist to erase a 2-0 deficit happened in the final 13 minutes of a do-or-die Game 7. That painful night in Dallas now feels merciful, compared with what this Avs team just experienced. A four-game sweep by the Vegas Golden Knights was somehow worse. It was an internal injury diagnosed too late, triggering a week-long spiral of physical and mental anguish.

“I think it just feels like a waste, to be honest,” Avs forward Logan O’Connor said. “Eighty-two games, you get tons of great pieces and feel as though you have a team that can do something special. We said it in training camp — it’s Cup or bust for us. Regardless of where you fall short, we fell super short of that goal.”

For nine months, that loss in Dallas looked like a prologue, the catalyst for a historic start to this season and eventual legacy-cementing championship for Jared Bednar, Nathan MacKinnon, Cale Makar and the rest of the Avs who reached the mountaintop five years ago but have languished through a variety of playoff disappointments since.

The Avs won the most games, scored the most goals and allowed the fewest during a dominant regular season. They steamrolled through the first half of the tournament, losing just once while scoring more than four goals per game.

Then the Golden Knights broke them. It took a week — a blink of an eye in the context of a long season, but the adjectives to describe how players felt in the Avalanche locker room Tuesday night were strikingly similar to that night in Dallas.

“Frustration. Sadness, I guess,” Avs defenseman Josh Manson said. “Really felt like we had a good team. We didn’t do the job. We lost. The expectations for this organization are high. And, just … didn’t go the way we wanted.”

By Game 4 of this series, the only way to tell it was the Avs on the ice at T-Mobile Arena was the uniforms. Colorado looked nothing like the team that demoralized opponents all year with its offensive and defensive prowess.

Every aspect of the Avs’ invincibility was punctured by a team that fired its head coach 51 days before this Western Conference final began and lost more games than it won during the regular season.

Colorado scored just seven goals in four games for the first time since early in the 2023-24 season. Scott Wedgewood, the NHL’s leader in goals against average and save percentage, was outplayed by a goaltender who, this time a year ago, was one of five defendants in a messy sexual assault trial and who wasn’t signed to an NHL contract until late October.

This Avs team was 45-0 when leading after two periods, until Vegas made it 45-1 in Game 2. Colorado was 52-0 when building a multi-goal lead at any point in a game, until Vegas made it 52-1 in Game 3.

This was the deepest team in the NHL, built to survive the war of attrition in the Stanley Cup playoffs. It was one of the healthiest teams in the league as well, but by the end of this run, the Avs’ injury luck was nearly as bad as their shooting woes.

Everything was leading to one outcome for the Avs — a second championship in five years, another parade and immortality for all the key figures. A week later, everything has changed, and there’s just as much uncertainty — maybe more — than the morning after Rantanen donned a green-and-black cape in Game 7.

“I mean, this one … I feel like it����ap going to take some time to kind of digest and process,” Avs forward Brock Nelson said. “I’m not worried about next year right now.”

A more complicated offseason

Colorado’s offseason looked pretty straightforward a week ago.

Brett Kulak and Brent Burns are unrestricted free agents. Jack Drury is a restricted free agent. The biggest potential storyline was Cale Makar’s massive new contract, but that one doesn’t start until the following season.

The Avs have very little cap space, so someone under contract will likely need to be traded to retain Drury and one of the defensemen, or to replace Kulak and Burns. Pretty simple stuff, relative to what other offseasons might look like.

Now? Everything has to be on the table.

The questions begin with the future of the coaching staff. Colorado fired one of Jared Bednar’s longtime lieutenants, Ray Bennett, last May after the power play failed in the Dallas series. The power play was still a problem for much of this season, the one source of consternation, even when all of the other parts of this club were at the peak of their powers.

If the Avalanche decide to let Bednar go, he would be fielding calls from other NHL teams before the end of the day. The one candidate who has a resume similar to Bednar’s who isn’t currently one of the 32 head coaches is the guy John Tortorella replaced in Sin City, Bruce Cassidy. But one of the biggest off-ice stories of this postseason has been the Golden Knights denying Edmonton and Los Angeles permission to speak with Cassidy because he’s still under contract with Vegas.

The next major question, with both short- and long-term ramifications, is the state of the roster. This team was built to win the Stanley Cup in 2026, and every core piece is under contract at least through next year.

That felt like a great thing 10 days ago. If this Avs team did go on to win the Stanley Cup, they’d be one of the top favorites for 2026-27 as well.

Now? The Avs looked old against the Golden Knights. Beyond Burns, who will be 41 when next season begins, Colorado has six key figures who will be 32 or older when the 2027 Stanley Cup Playoffs begin — Nazem Kadri, Brock Nelson and Manson will be 35 or older, while Gabe Landeskog, Wedgewood and Devon Toews will all be at least 32.

Then there are Valeri Nichushkin and Artturi Lehkonen. Having those two excellent two-way players on team-friendly contracts has been part of Colorado’s secret sauce since 2022. No other NHL team has two secondary stars like them when they are healthy and playing well.

Their style of play and injury history, not to mention Nichushkin’s off-ice troubles, have made them high-risk, high-reward players in recent seasons. Lehkonen was hurt in the second round and far off his typical impact against Vegas. Nichushkin couldn’t finish the conference final because of an injury, and this year was his worst per-game offensive output since the 2020-21 campaign.

Martin Necas is the youngest core player on the team, but his new contract at $11.5 million per season kicks in next year. He was great against Minnesota, but the external allegations that he isn’t a postseason player resurfaced after he was one of the least impactful players on the roster against Vegas.

The Avs chose not to move any core players after losing to Dallas last year. The rationale was that they shook up the roster so much in-season that some stability going into this year would help fuel another run.

For nine months, that plan looked perfect. Staying the course looks far more uncertain now.

“I certainly hope so,” Landeskog said when asked if this core has another run in it. “I believe in that.

“It’s hard, but I think at the end of the day, if there’s one thing I learned over the last handful of years, it’s get knocked down, you just get right back up. Yeah, that’s the only way to do it.”

The 2026 Western Conference Final was played anywhere Vegas wanted it. The corners. The boards. The neutral zone. In between the Avalanche players’ ears, mostly.

The Golden Knights turned the NHL’s fastest team into a Corvette on cinder blocks. This wasn’t just a sweep. It was Hartbreak. It was arguably the biggest Colorado sports choke since Broncos-Jaguars in ’96. It was six days in May we’ll never get back. It was so bad, David Adelman cringed.

“Disappointed. Humiliated,” Avs forward Logan O’Connor, as stand-up as they come, told reporters at T-Mobile Arena after his season ended in a 2-1 defeat. “I think, to a man, (we) just weren’t good enough. Not a single guy was the whole entire series.”

The Golden Knights burned with hunger, fear and desperation, especially at Ball Arena, where the tone for disaster was set. Vegas players pounded the glass and drove the puck as if they’d just watched their coach get fired on March 29 — and any one of them could be next.

The Avs played hurt, yes. They also played fat and happy in Games 1 and 2. They carried the look of a roster with guaranteed contracts and guaranteed tee times, the harbinger of a fore-game sweep.

That starts at the top.

Stan Kroenke and Josh Kroenke are hoops, football and soccer guys first. They treat the Avs like a burgundy-headed stepchild. They love that their little hockey team, at least compared to the Nuggets, is a no-drama llama. They’re happy to let Joe Sakic sweat the small stuff.

Vegas fans brought the brooms Tuesday night. It’s time Super Joe started swinging his around.

The Avalanche are too stubborn. Too comfortable. If general manager Chris MacFarland wants to leave the Front Range to go rebuild the Nashville Predators, let him. C-Mac’s re-arranged deck chairs about 17 times since the Avs won it all five years ago. All it’s done is make the best fans in hockey angrier and the best roster in the game older. Way, way, waaaay older.

Once Cale Makar was out and Nathan MacKinnon got dinged in the knee, Colorado began to show its age. Brent Burns turns 42 in March. Nazem Kadri will be 36 in October; Brock Nelson and Josh Manson turn 35 that month. Scott Wedgewood turns 34 in August. Captain Gabe Landeskog turns 34 in November. Devon Toews turns 33 next February; Valeri Nichushkin will be 32 in March.

The Avs wouldn’t be running it back in 2027. They’d be hobbling. And hobbling , the smallest cushion in the NHL.

“How big their window? I don’t want to say it’s closing. But it’s not opening,” former Avs great Erik Johnson, now an ESPN analyst,

“They’ve already played (the) shake-up-your-core card with (Mikko) Rantanen, right? So they’ve played that card. What’s the next card they play, if they still feel like their window’s open — which I think it is?”

Play the Joker, Super Joe. Go wild.

The Avs need fresh eyes. Fresh legs. Fresh voices. Fresh ideas. Almost every “tough guy” MacFarland acquired lost their edge once they moved to the mountains. Almost every 2C revamp since a younger Kadri left five years ago eventually crashed or burned. Jared Bednar has become the George Karl of Avs coaches — a regular-season savant and a playoff fraud.

Bednar’s white board during the playoffs never seems to have an answer for a team that takes away the rush, clogs the neutral zone and clamps down on the tempo. Once Bedsy finds a Plan B in May, he rarely sticks to it. Colorado appeared out of gas by midway through Game 3 of the Western Conference Final. Zone entries stunk. Zone exits stunk. A team with the best record in the NHL looked like strangers playing pick-up on the pond.

Injuries? Cry us a river. Dallas beat the Avs in the first round of the ’25 playoffs without Jason Robertson and Miro Heiskanen. The Knights didn’t have captain Mark Stone for Games 1 and 2 in Denver. Injuries in the Stanley Cup are excuses — everybody’s got them. You find a path. You find a way.

The Avs rolled over. Over the last 13 minutes of the second period and the first eight minutes of the third stanza, Colorado, while trailing 1-0 in a do-or-die contest, got one shot off. One. When Vegas’ Tomas Hertl appeared to interfere with Martin Necas with 8:04 left in the second frame, the latter went down in a heap while the former just laughed. No call. MacKinnon got tripped. No call. Vegas had too many men. No call.

The bracket says a VGK sweep had to be a fluke. It wasn’t. Vegas goalie Carter Hart, icky narrative and all, was the best player in the series. The Avs ran into a bigger, smarter, sharper version of the Kings. Yet while Los Angeles knew it was out of its weight class from the jump, John Tortorella’s guys smelled a sucker with a soft underbelly. Play with your food against Vegas, they’ll take your lunch money and ransack the kitchen.

At least it was over with early, unlike Game 3’s cruel cosmic joke. Kadri didn’t track Stone some 4:42 into Game 4, and the sight of the 57-year-old winger somehow beating Kadri and Makar down the ice, then backhanding Vegas into a 1-0 lead, summed up a series in all its agony.

The hockey gods twisted a rusty knife with 6:08 left in the opening stanza. Nelson beat the Vegas defense for a point-blank look in front of the Golden Knights’ crease, not all that different from the chance Stone got. Only No. 11 fired high and saw his puck snatched out of the air by Hart, the way your uncle used to catch a mosquito and squash it in his palm.

“I think Jared Bednar is a heck of a coach,” Johnson opined. “But at the same time, if you go through the window of Landeskog, MacKinnon and Makar, and you only get one Cup in that whole Avalanche era of their greatness, I think that’s a failure, right?”

Darn straight. If you can’t find Plan B on the ice, it’s time to find it somewhere else. Until the Avs feel uncomfortable, no one should ever feel truly comfortable about them lifting Lord Stanley again.

Colorado has scored three goals in two games against the Vegas Golden Knights in the Western Conference Final. The Avs have been one short, before empty-net goals allowed, in both contests.

They felt like they played better for parts of Game 2, but they actually created less offense — and missed the net entirely on some of their best chances. Yes, Cale Makar’s absence is huge, and there was no update Saturday on his status for Game 3 on Sunday night at T-Mobile Arena.

But this team scored the most goals in the NHL this season, and was pouring in the most per contest in this tournament until these past two games against Vegas.

“If I felt like we played our best game in Game 1 and our best game in Game 2, and we lost, I’d be a little bit more like, ‘Oh, I’m really worried about this,’ ” Avs coach Jared Bednar said. “They’re really good team, especially their strengths are very strong.  I look at our game and I break it down in different areas. … show them clear examples of it, show them some things tactically that we did well that we can repeat, show them areas of the game, say offensively, where this guy’s open, why did we just use them and we’re not recognizing it or choosing to do something different, so it����ap some decision making.

“There’s enough of it there that I say we can be much better in Game 3, that’s what gives me the confidence. It doesn’t guarantee you a win, but they still haven’t seen our best, and maybe we haven’t seen their best either. We have a number of areas in our game that we can improve for Game 3 to get us a better chance of winning.”

The surface numbers are pretty obvious, even if the sample size in this series is obviously quite small. Nathan MacKinnon, Martin Necas and Brock Nelson combined for 124 goals and 292 points in the regular season. Along with Makar’s 20 goals and 79 points, those are the top four scorers on this team.

They’ve combined for one assist in this series — when MacKinnon set up Gabe Landeskog for a power-play goal late in Game 1. They have no points at 5-on-5.

During the regular season, the Avs created 3.69 expected goals per 60 minutes when Nelson was on the ice, 3.67 when MacKinnon was out there and 3.38 with Necas. Those numbers are all down in this series.

MacKinnon is at 2.88, while Necas (2.0) and Nelson (1.84) are the lowest among the Avalanche forwards. The MacKinnon line had an excellent defensive showing in Game 2, but created just 0.75 expected goals in nearly 16 minutes at 5-on-5. In Game 1, the Avs also created 0.75 expected goals when MacKinnon was on the ice at 5-on-5.

Five days ago, MacKinnon and Necas were two of the hottest players in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. The power play was also clicking. Two tough losses later, and the narrative has swung in the other direction in a hurry.

“We’ve got to find a way to produce, right?” Bednar said. “But part of the reason why their top guys are producing is we’re giving them those easy opportunities. They’re not giving those to us, right? So, according to my numbers, we’ve spent a significant more amount of time in o-zone play than them. Home-plate chances, low slot chances are pretty even. I think they’re leaning in our favor, and rush chances is an advantage to them.

“We’ve got to find a way to make it a little more difficult on (Carter) Hart and breaking his eyesight, and keep going to war in the low-slot area, try to pick up some chances. But right now when you’re looking at the chances, it’s very even. I think, again we’re handing him some easy chances and some goals against right now that we can’t afford to.”

As Bednar alluded to there, Vegas has effectively done what Colorado did to Los Angeles in the first round. The Golden Knights allowed zero odd-man rushes in Game 2, while three of their five goals against Scott Wedgewood in this series have come at the end of one.

Vegas has slowed Colorado down in the neutral zone, but also been able to defend with a compact shell once the Avs do create offensive possessions. Ross Colton’s Game 2 goal was the best example of how the Avs can navigate the problem.

Brent Burns sent the puck to the net, and Colton was in a great spot when the shot was blocked. He found the loose puck and put it past Hart because the goaltender could reset.

This isn’t some new tactical idea the Avs haven’t seen before. The Dallas Stars did something similar with Peter DeBoer as coach. Ditto the Winnipeg Jets in the first round in 2024.

The Jets had the best goalie on the planet, but the Avs broke them with a flurry of tips, deflections and screened shots that Connor Hellebuyck did not handle.

Colorado needs more goals, plain and simple. The top players on the team need to be better. The power play needs to contribute.

Even if the Avs feel the process has been good, it needs to be great if they’re going to have a chance to get back in this series.

“There’s obviously a lot of different things we can do,” Avs forward Nicolas Roy said. “I think going hard on the forecheck has been working for us. In the defensive zone, they’re trying to keep us on the outside, so kind of try to go there to the netfront and win those battles and get those rebounds as well. There’s definitely things we can do. Just look at the video and we’ll be ready.”

They were beaten, playing out the string to fulfill the NHL’s TV obligations.

This national narrative took hold after the Avs ruled out superstar defenseman Cale Makar on Friday morning.

After watching a future Hall of Famer look uncomfortable during a morning skate, an unnerving question hung over the city on Friday night.

Who would shoulder the burden?

No one.

The Avs were beaten. And now history says they are beaten.

Only one team has lost the first two games on home ice and won a conference finals series. That came in 1945 by the Detroit Red Wings. Goalies didn’t even wear masks regularly back then.

To those watching this series closely between the Avs and Golden Knights, it is not a surprise that Las Vegas is in control.

What is shocking is that the Avs did something they never do. As in ever. In falling 3-1 on Friday night, the Avs squandered a second-period lead.

They were 45-0-0 with an advantage entering the final 20 minutes this season, counting the playoffs.

They had it. Then the sellout crowd couldn’t believe what it witnessed.

In the span of 2 minutes, 7 seconds, the Golden Knights turned what was expected to be a night of joyous relief into full-scale panic and disappointment.

“It stings right now,” captain Gabe Landeskog said after Colorado lost back-to-back games in regulation for the first time since mid March.

Is there a Staples button Avs coach Jared Bednar can push to fix everything? Or anything?

The Avs dropping the opener wasn’t a surprise. Had a layoff, were rusty, and messy. The Avs collapsing in Game 2 was stunning.

It started innocently enough with Jack Eichel getting loose down the right side of the ice with 10:45 remaining for his first goal in 11 games.

If it seemed inconceivable that he had gone that long without finding the back of the net, it was equally unbelievable that he made it.

Scott Wedgewood, harder to solve than an AI-generated password, misplayed the right-handed shot over his right pad. He will not be thrilled when watching the replay, but he was left vulnerable.

“One you want back,” Wedgewood said.

Devon Toews got caught in between as Eichel stormed down the ice, trying not to cede ground while fronting Eichel in a 3-on-2 break. Given enough space, Eichel did not miss. Something the Avs did regularly.

What happened next captured why the Avs find themselves aching, their bodies and minds sore after careening into a ditch. They made a glaring mistake, the kind that the Kings and Wild were incapable of taking advantage of in the first two rounds.

Toews, trying to pick up the slack without Makar, couldn’t clear the puck twice.

Within a blink, it was on Ivan Barbashev’s stick and rocketing past Wedgewood’s mask. An empty-netter finished the scoring. And started the blaming.

Don’t pin this on Wedgewood. He played well enough to win. The fingers need to be directed at the inability to finish. Effort was not an issue. It was execution.

“It����ap all about the details. It feels like we handed them the goals,” said Avs’ Marty Necas, who has failed to get on track offensively in this series. “We had some chances we could’ve capitalized on and we didn’t. I feel we’re going to be better. We just have to have the jump from first shift. That����ap it.”

The Avs fired 30 shots on goal. But they were not of the highest quality. If Carter Hart doesn’t turn into Corey Hart and start wearing sunglasses at night, it seems unlikely the Avs stage a miraculous comeback.

Hart has allowed three goals. He is not getting beaten by anyone or any one shot. The only thing that prevented a shutout was Ross Colton plucking in a rebound off Brent Burns’ sniper off Hart’s chest.

But where were the rest of the chances like this? The Avs emphasized the importance of getting dirty goals, of winning in front of the net. And they got none of it.

It doesn’t help that some of their best players remain ghosts in this series, like Brock Nelson, and, if we are being honest, Valeri Nichushkin.

It is as if they don’t exist offensively.

No team is totally prepared to move on without a player as talented as Makar — there is no guarantee he plays in this series because of his injury — but this is why general manager Chris MacFarland traded for Nazem Kadri.

The Avs had only two power-play opportunities and a 4-on-4 that resembled one. Is it too much to ask Kadri, a huge reason the Avs won their last Stanley Cup, to become a Hartbreaker? At 35 years old, perhaps we do not want to know the answer to that after his mistake-filled evening.

That goosebumps win over the Wild seems like a long time ago. After the magical ending of the second round series, the unfathomable seems poised to happen.

The Avs are on the brink on the rink.

“We won’t get caught up in the situation (of leading 2-0),” Golden Knights coach John Tortorella said. “I know I am not going to have to worry about that because they get it.”

The Knights are calloused, legitimate. But there would be no way to view this other than as an epic fail if the Avs cannot rally.

The Golden Knights are great between the dots and, clearly, in between the Avs’ ears.

“We cannot ride the roller coaster that fans ride,” Bednar said. “We are not giving up on our season because we have lost two games.”

The Vegas Golden Knights scored a pair of goals 127 seconds apart in the third period Friday night to plunder Game 2 of the Western Conference Final and seize complete control of this series. Vegas goalie Carter Hart made 29 saves in the 3-1 victory, and the Golden Knights now lead the Presidents’ Trophy-winning Avalanche 2-0 in this best-of-seven series.

“You have to deal with the task at hand and what����ap to come,” Avs coach Jared Bednar said. “We’re not going to try and win four games the next night in Vegas. We’re trying to win one. It can sound cliche, but that����ap how we approach it. Focus on our process, what we need to do.

“We played a great hockey game tonight. So did they. It could go either way.”

Game 3 will be Sunday night in Sin City at T-Mobile Arena. The Avs will now need to win four of the next five games, including at least two in Las Vegas, for this remarkable ride not to end short of the expected destination. Superstar defenseman Cale Makar did not play again after missing Game 1 with an upper-body injury.

The Avs were 41-0-0 in the regular season when leading after two periods and 4-0 in the postseason before Friday night.

“It stings for sure right now, but tomorrow we’ll wake up, have a meeting, fly to Vegas and regroup,” Avs captain Gabe Landeskog said. “That’s all you can do.”

Jack Eichel evened the score for Vegas at 9:15 of the third period. He took a shot from the right faceoff circle with Avs defenseman Devon Toews bearing down on him that beat Wedgewood on the far side just inside the left post. It was Eichel’s second goal of this postseason.

Ivan Barbashev gave Vegas its first lead of the night at 11:22. Toews tried to flip the puck out of danger in the defensive end, but Pavel Dorofeyev got a piece of it. The puck went to Eichel, who quickly shuffled it to Barbashev for a shot from the middle of the ice above the circles that rattled off the left post and in.

“It����ap a fine margin for error, the difference of winning and losing,” Bednar said. “There’s obviously things in the game, especially you gave up two in the third period, that you don’t like. There’s a lot of that game that I really liked, and so you’ve got to keep chipping away at the margins.

Ross Colton opened the scoring at 16:59 of the first period. Brent Burns sent one of his patented stinger shots towards the Vegas net from the right point. It didn’t get there, but Colton was in the right place to corral the loose puck after the initial shot was blocked. Colton snapped one into the top-right corner of the net for his second goal of this postseason.

Given how much success the Avs had in the regular season and how well the first two rounds of this tournament went, it wasn’t hyperbole to say Colton’s goal at the time was one of the most important of the 2025-26 season for the Avalanche to date.

Vegas was in control of this game before Colton scored. The Golden Knights looked much smoother breaking the puck out of its own end, and the Avs had multiple defensive breakdowns in theirs. The quantity of chances were pretty similar in the opening 16 minutes, but the quality clearly favored the visitors.

Avs goalie Scott Wedgewood was immense in the first 20 minutes, and then his teammates were much better in the second. It was a choppier period, in part because five penalties were called. Colorado’s penalty kill was immense, erasing three Vegas opportunities and drawing an infraction as well.

“We dug a hole. It����ap on us,” Avs forward Logan O’Connor said. “We’ve got to reset, go into Vegas and do the same thing they did to us. It starts with one game and just chip away at this thing. There are things we can learn from that game, I think we got away from our game plan in the third period, we let them hang around throughout the game and they’re gonna capitalize on their opportunities.”

Already missing Makar, the Avs appeared to dodge a disaster late in the second period. Josh Manson dished out a huge hit along the boards in his own end, but also propelled himself into the wall awkwardly. He went down the tunnel and missed the end of the period, but was able to come back for the final period.

Vegas took Game 1 of this series two nights prior, leaning on 36 saves from Hart, but also a sound defensive effort in front of him while building a three-goal lead. Colorado made a late push, but fell short in a 4-2 defeat.

“Flip the script — win two there and come back and have home ice again,” Wedgewood said. “They did it to us, no reason we can’t do it to them. … Obviously we have to find a recipe to put the puck in the net, keep it out of ours. Just flip the script and go to work.

“That why it����ap a seven-game series. Find a way to win a game and go from there.”

FOOTNOTES: Both Makar and Vegas captain Mark Stone skated this morning at Ball Arena, but both impact players remained out of the lineup. Stone missed the final three games in the second round against Anaheim as well.

“I’m worried, to an extent,” Avalanche fan Jesse Klus confided as we’d huddled at the glass in front of Ball Arena’s Section 140, less than hour before Colorado got jumped by Vegas, 4-2, in Game 1 of the Western Conference Final. “But I have faith. We have a team where if one guy goes down, it’s the next-man-up mentality.”

The next men turned up. Kind of. But none of that adds up to squat if the Avs’ leading men take two-and-a-half periods to get their

“We just weren’t sharp,” Avalanche star Nathan MacKinnon reflected later. “Execution was poor from everybody. Yeah, just gotta be sharper than that.”

Especially when you’re already rolling onto the ice a legend short. In the Avalanche’s first postseason game without defenseman Cale Makar since 2023, Colorado’s other pillars were MIA until the final 5 minutes.

By the time vintage Nate Dogg joined the party, the Avs trailed 3-1 and burgundy and blue faithful were streaming into the aisles.

With 2:20 left, No. 29 spun his defender into a soft pretzel at the right post and fed a cutting Gabriel Landeskog to get the Avs to within a goal. Only a Vegas empty-netter dashed any dreams of a repeat of Minnesota Game 5, and welcome to life behind the 8-ball.

With no Cale, the Avs paled. They passed too much. They got passive. The shooting was lousy, the puck management was spotty, the back checks were inconsistent. The top two lines vanished, forcing coach Jared Bednar to mix and match on the fly.

The Golden Knights’ strategy was simple — get a one-goal lead and park the bus. So why the heck did Colorado oblige them? Over the middle 40 minutes of regulation, the Avs looked flatter than the top of the Grand Mesa. It was if Vegas knew the series started Wednesday and MacKinnon & Company were waiting ’til Friday’s Game 2 to turn the engine over.

“No. 1, you can’t baby the puck around the ice,” Bednar said. “The slower your pass goes to the open man, the quicker (the defense is) going to get out there. I felt like there were opportunities to make earlier, quicker decisions. zip the puck hard.”

The Golden Knights had better juice, better coaching, better goaltending, better special teams and a better plan. They also better utilized the dark arts of playoff hockey, winking their way into some friendly calls.

Somebody needs to give Vegas’ Rasmus Andersson an Oscar, by the way. Best Dive In a Conference Final.

With six minutes left in the second period, Rose Colton pushed Andersson out of the Vegas crease, and the Golden Knights defender went to the ice with, shall we say, more than a little drama.

A flop is a flop is a flop. It worked, getting Colton a roughing call and Vegas an extra man.

Which immediately paid off. The Golden Knights put a second goal on the board when Vegas winger Mitch Marner wrapped a pass behind his back to teammate Pavel Dorofeyev just before Logan O’Connor sent him into the boards. Dorofeyev lost Brent Burns in front of the Colorado net and Scott Wedgewood lost the puck, as a point-blank wrister pushed the Golden Knights’ lead to 2-0 and pushed Ball Arena’s collective blood pressure up about 30 points.

Midway through the third period, Vegas had two goals and an assist from its first and second lines. The Avs had goose eggs.

“(It’s) impossible to replace Makar, of course,” ESPN analyst Ray Ferraro warned me prior to the puck drop. “But if we’re talking one game, that’s survivable.

“I certainly think if (Makar is) out longer-term, or the bulk of this series, it would be a huge advantage, of course, for Vegas. This feels like a massive opportunity for Vegas (Wednesday).”

They took it. The Avs made Vegas goalie Carter Hart work for it in the second period, outshooting the visitors 6-1 in the first 6 minutes of the stanza. But if Hart wasn’t pulling a puck out of the air, a Golden Knight was beating Colorado attackers to loose biscuits in front of the crease, then sweeping them out of danger.

Avs D-man Sam Malinsky isn’t Makar, but who is? Without Cale, it was hard not to miss a presence that’s usually everywhere on the ice — defense, power play, penalty kill, the works.

But it was felt the most on Wednesday at the blue line in the offensive zone. When Vegas didn’t have a generational sniper to worry about, they could pack the slot and the crease the way NBA defenses could collapse on Nikola Jokic in the paint.

And nobody could beat Hart from distance, or even set up a friendly tip, over the first 40 minutes. O’Connor came the closest, but his wrister 5:11 into the contest doinked hard off the left post.

“NO MEANS NO!” Avs fans chanted at Hart, the nimble net-minder with the unsavory backstory.

“NO MEANS NO!”

“NO MEANS NO!”

“NO MEANS NO!”

Yet it was Hart, to the chagrin of a packed Ball and most of America, who controlled the crease and the grease from the jump. It felt a lot like the Kings series, only against bigger bodies, tighter checks and quicker sticks.

The Avs and Golden Knights both fired off 10 shots apiece in a scoreless opening stanza, as the hosts forced more Vegas giveaways (10) while the Fightin’ Torts racked up six blocked shots. At least two or three Vegas defenders seemed form a protective wall in front of Hart whenever the Avs sent the cavalry.

Before Wednesday night, the Avs had only played one postseason game since 2020 without Makar. That was in 2023, Game 5 of that ill-fated Seattle first-round series at Ball Arena, when the Colorado D-man was suspended for an interference penalty earlier in the series. The Kraken held on for a 3-2 win and would win the series in Denver four days later.

Nobody asked for a sequel. Jesse least of all.

Klus is 33. He’s been an Avs fan for 26 years, rooting from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, some 971 miles north of Chopper Circle. Jesse flew in Wednesday morning, dropping $1200 in Canadian dollars on airfare and $700 for Wednesday’s ticket.

Daughter Braeleigh digs Cale even more than Jesse does. She even gave him a bracelet with “MAKAR” spelled in tiny beads last November in Vancouver, outside the Avs’ hotel.

‘I’ll trade you a bracelet for a jersey,” Makar told her. He pulled out a white No. 8 sweater, signed it and handed it over.

“(The Avs) kind of went up and down like waves,” Jesse said of Game 1. “When we had the momentum, we were all over it. Then it dropped off for a while, then back up.”

And your faith?

“Still heavy,” Klus said. “But the effort needs to come heavy like they did in the first period — hard, fast, ready to compete. Thirty-eight shots isn’t bad. But we could’ve had plenty more. And hope to goodness’ sake Cale comes back.”

Amen. Sometimes, it’s just not your Knight. But if you don’t get some juice from the big boys, and fast, it won’t be your series, either.