This is where things could get interesting.

The Avs look set in net, both at the NHL level and beyond, for next season. The defense corps needs some work, but there’s an excellent top four to build around.

But the place to look for where newly named general manager Joe Sakic might shake up this roster for next season is on the wings. It already started Tuesday, when the Avalanche sent Ross Colton to the Nashville Predators, reuniting him with Chris MacFarland, for two third-round picks.

And Colton might not be the only wing who isn’t on the roster on opening night.

What just happened

When all of Colorado’s wings were healthy last season, it was hard to name more than one or two teams with a better collection of them in the NHL.

Martin Necas had a career season, setting new highs with 38 goals and 100 points. He was also Czechia’s best player at the 2026 Winter Olympics, had a great second round against the Minnesota Wild and then was one of Colorado’s least impactful players against Vegas in the Western Conference Final.

Gabe Landeskog’s brilliant comeback story continued. He won the Bill Masterton Memorial Trophy, did not miss a game in the regular season because of his reconstructed knee and then had five goals and 11 points in 13 playoff games.

Valeri Nichushkin and Artturi Lehkonen were both very good and very important players, though neither produced goals at the same per-contest rate as they have in recent seasons. Both also missed time during the playoffs with injuries, and their effectiveness was limited by said ailments in other contests as well.

Colton scuffled for long stretches in the regular season and spent the first two games of the playoffs as a healthy scratch, but was one of the club’s more consistent players once inserted into the lineup. Nicolas Roy, who also saw some time at center, was a great fit as a depth scorer and versatile player after arriving from Toronto ahead of the trade deadline.

Parker Kelly had a dream season, smashing career-best totals with 21 goals and 35 points. Logan O’Connor missed nearly the entire regular season, but looked like the critical depth playoff performer of old once the postseason began.

Joel Kiviranta’s year after a breakout offensive campaign did not look as impressive on the scoresheet as the 2024-25 season, but he remained a trusted depth guy for coach Jared Bednar. Zakhar Bardakov made the team in training camp and showed flashes of intriguing energy, but the NHL rookie played in just four of the final 12 regular-season games and did not play in the playoffs. He is a restricted free agent and could return to Russia because there isn’t an obvious path to more regular time next year in Denver.

Gavin Brindley was the club’s best rookie and an early-season spark plug, but he was sent to the AHL shortly after the Avs loaded up at the deadline and did not return. Taylor Makar made the most appearances (12) of a forward who began the season with the Colorado Eagles and looked like a player who might turn out to be a fourth-line regular at some point in the future.

What¶¶Òõap next

Colton is gone … will anyone else from this group join him?

Necas is about to start the first season of an eight-year, $92 million contract. His full no-move clause kicks in July 1. He could finish with 110 points next season, but he can’t answer the big-picture questions about his ultimate value until the 2027 playoffs.

When Nichushkin and Lehkonen are healthy and in form, they give the Avs star-level value on very team-friendly contracts. But, the first part of that sentence feels more in question, given their ages and style of play. Lehkonen is also entering the final year of his contract, so all options — an extension, playing it out or a trade — seem plausible.

In each of the past two postseasons when Colorado advanced beyond the first round, Lehkonen’s impact declined. That was definitely injury-related in 2026. Nichushkin’s availability issues have been well documented.

Not everyone in this core group will age at the same rate. Finding a way to inject another impact player into this group that is closer to Necas’ age or even younger would be ideal, but the Avs don’t have the future assets (nor the cap flexibility) to do that right now. Trading another outer-circle core piece might be the only avenue.

Landeskog had no tangible issues with his knee this year, but that doesn’t mean it’s fine in perpetuity. His value obviously goes far beyond the production. Colton has to be replaced, though there could be an internal candidate or two — at least to start next season.

Either Roy or Kelly could end up back at center if Jack Drury doesn’t return. Conversely, Nazem Kadri could slide to the wing to help one of the top-two lines if Bednar thinks one of the depth guys can handle the No. 3 center spot.

Brindley and Makar will be two guys to watch during training camp, along with T.J. Hughes, who had no trouble being an impact guy for the Eagles, but his ultimate NHL ceiling is both unclear and fascinating.

There are lots of questions here:

1. Will the Avs just run this group back, minus Colton, and expect either better health luck, improved postseason results or both?

2. Will the Avs be able to find a younger top-nine forward while still rebuilding the back half of the defense corps?

3. Could the Avs afford to part with a top-end forward to specifically add one more impact defenseman, and is there enough depth up front to cover for that, at least until the trade deadline?

Moving Colton for cap flexibility kicked off the Sakic 2.0 regime and the 2026 offseason. It might not be the last big shakeup, either.

Future depth chart

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

Count to 10. Deep breath. Exhale. Slowly. Put the pitchforks down and ask yourself this question:

Who could the Avalanche get to coach their team — right now — who would be better — again, right this very second — than Jared Bednar?

David Carle? Best coach in the time zone. I was in that camp a year ago, my friend.  The driver of DU’s hockey dynasty is allegedly not ready to walk through that door.

Jay Woodcroft? Can he draw up a defense? No thanks.

Craig Berube? Too much Maple Leaf. Pass.

Kris Knoblauch? Nah.

Bruce Cassidy? Sure, but there’s a catch: He’s technically off the market. The Golden Knights, classy to the last, refuse to let their former coach out of a contract that runs through 2027 — even though they’d relieved him of his duties with eight games to go in the regular season.

After Carle or Cassidy, whom the Vegas brass have locked up in in dungeon near Circus Circus, the pickings look awfully slim.

Which, we’ll grant you, isn’t the sexiest reason to run it back with Bednar. But we’ll give you another rationale: Joe Sakic is inheriting something of a hot mess, at least as championship-level teams go.

Sakic built the best house on the NHL’s block four years ago. But when he handed the keys over to Chris MacFarland, the maintenance costs went through the roof. Which, by the way, now leaks when it rains.

When MacFarland left the Avs’ general manager post to run the Nashville Predators on Tuesday, he left a pile of bills on the kitchen table and the basement unfinished. Colorado has roughly $3 million of cap space available for ’26-27 and only 17 players under contract. The Avalanche don’t have a first-round pick until 2029.

MacFarland took a Kyle Schwarber approach to roster management — C-Mac swung hard and swung from his heels, but the misses could be heard for miles. Trading Mikko Rantanen was supposed to ease the cap strain for ’26-27 and ’27-28, but the Avs landed back on that track anyway thanks to the Martin Necas contract. Swapping out Rantanen and Bo Byram didn’t age well. Neither did hanging onto Samuel Girard for as long as they did.

Cale Makar is expected to undergo surgery that will almost surely delay the start of his ’26-27 season. Also, he’s eligible for a contract extension on July 1 that could almost double his current cap number of $9 million. Necas is making $11.5 million a year through 2034 to be a playoff ghost. Brock Nelson, your 2C, is making $7.5 million a year to play defense.

Captain Gabe Landeskog turns 34 in November; Scott Wedgewood turns 34 in August. Devon Toews turns 33 next February. Valeri Nichushkin will be 32 in March. Nazem Kadri will be 36 in the fall. Nelson and Josh Manson will turn 35 in October.

, the Avs are on a track to use 56.1% of their expected ’26-27 cap space on players 31 years of age or older. That’s a lot of old dogs to try and teach new tricks.

Bednar isn’t nearly as divisive a winner as Sean Payton, but he’s getting closer by the summer. Like Sunshine Sean, Bedsy offers a high floor, good-to-brilliant regular seasons, and inevitable playoff heartbreak brought on by a combination of stubbornness and the inability to adapt on the fly. Every time that second title looks close, something happens that snatches the dream away.

A decade of Bednar has produced one Stanley Cup title, two conference final appearances and four second-round exits. For a team whose core has at least two future Hall-of-Famers in Nathan MacKinnon and Makar, and featured a third in Rantanen for most of Bednar’s era, that feels like a slightly underwhelming return on the trophy front. Very good suddenly feels very stale.

Fun fact: Seven of the last nine Western Conference championship coaches got to the Stanley Cup Final within their first 12 months on the job — including John Tortorella in Vegas, who’d only landed the gig in April.

Counter: Six of the last nine Eastern Conference-winning coaches were on their jobs six years or longer when they reached the Cup Final.

The last eight Cup championship-winning coaches did so with about four seasons with their current team already under their belts, on average. A quick-strike hire might get you there, but they usually don’t get over the line — the Final coach with the most tenure with a franchise has won three of the last five Cups and five of the last eight.

Bedsy also hasn’t lost the locker room, for whatever that’s worth. MacKinnon trusts him, which is no mean feat. Logan O’Connor has told me in multiple chats over multiple seasons that players appreciate Jared’s steady, calm voice during a nine-month grind.

“His work ethic and his preparation is something that there is zero complacency in what he does day-to-day,” O’Connor, the former Pios star, said last spring. “How (Bednar) operates, the meetings he runs, the message he delivers, what he expects from players, having good relationships with players — I think he creates a clear picture of how he wants us to play.

“And that goes from first line to fourth line, individuals to power play to penalty kill. I think you know exactly the expectations that he has for you. And then it’s on us to go out there and execute those expectations. I think he just has the utmost respect from us players. And it’s no surprise that he’s had as great of a run as he has, given the volatility in the (coaching) market. And we all love playing for him.”

For Sakic and the Kroenkes, the question of Bednar, whose current contract extension expires at the end of next season, is largely this:

Do you prefer something safe and predictable — 50-plus wins in the regular season, followed by a second-round postseason exit — or the crap shoot of a new coaching hire?

Do you want to be hockey’s version of the ’90s Atlanta Braves? Or do you want to roll the dice? After being shamed on The Strip, we’re about to find out if Super Joe’s still in a gambling mood.

“As a player, you’re going to have stretches where you’re not on the scoresheet and where (Makar) could still be helping the team,” TNT analyst and former NHL center told me earlier this month. “And where Cale could still be having an impact.”

To put it another way: How much did you enjoy seeing Colorado, minus Makar, struggle to score three goals over Games 1 and 2 of the Western Conference Final?

Look, we get it. Yes, the Avs Yes, Makar is due for a contract extension as soon as July 1. Yes, that extension will probably be worth anywhere from $15-17 million per season — a healthy bump from the $9-million cap hit Makar commanded in ’25-26.

The Avs need cap space. They need draft picks. They need to get younger and fresher on the ice. They need more roster flexibility off it.

Let’s workshop this. No bad ideas.

Trade Makar!

OK, except for that one.

With an aging lineup and a shrinking Stanley Cup window, it’s definitely time to think outside the box.

Last week hurt. Vegas hurt. Be angry. Be vigilant. Just don’t be silly. Any executive shopping Makar should be exiled to

In NHL history, Makar had already done it twice by the age of 27. He won’t turn 30 until October 2028. Just get a load of the other names on the list to pull that off multiple times: Paul Coffey (seven times), Bobby Orr (six), Al MacInnis (three), Dennis Potvin (three) and Phil Housley (twice).

Trade Makar for draft picks!

Who let Jeff Bridich in here?

Depth matters in the postseason. A lot. The old adage that you go as far as your top two lines in the regular season and as far as your bottom two in the playoffs still holds up. Brock Nelson, Artturi Lehkonen, Nicolas Roy and Logan O’Connor, all of whom provided some juice against the Kings and Wild, combined for zero goals and one point against Vegas. One lousy point.

That said, anyone who tells you that a team can’t win a Stanley Cup with multiple players making $10 million or more isn’t your friend. For one, the salary cap is a moving target. For another, Florida won back-to-back titles with Aleksander Barkov and Sergei Bobrovsky on eight-figure cap hits.

Plus, two words: Mikko Rantanen.

But we won the trade!

Did you, though?

Martin Necas is one of the few forwards, granted, who can skate with Nathan MacKinnon at full tilt. No. 88 reads the game well. He also can spend so much time looking for the perfect pass that whole shifts pass him by.

The Marty Party produced one postseason goal in 2026. He’s put up two goals over 20 playoff games (with 16 helpers) for Colorado so far. He’s due to cost you $11.5 million in every cap year through 2033-34.

To general manager Chris MacFarland’s credit, he’s tried to avoid a roster that becomes too top-heavy, too Oilers South, with MacKinnon accounting for a $12.6-milion cap number and raises for Necas and Makar looming. But moving Cale just to stay in that neighborhood would be sheer Looney Tunes.

Even a shallow dive into the metrics makes Makar critics look all wet. No. 8 has strung together arguably his two least-impactful postseasons, back-to-back, in ’24-25 and ’25-26, largely due to injury. And yet, , he still logged 456 minutes and change in front of the Lumberyard tandem of Scott Wedgewood and Mackenzie Blackwood in goal. When No. 8 has been on the ice over the Avs’ last 20 playoff games, Colorado’s giving up 1.97 goals per 60 minutes in all strengths. With Makar on the bench, the Avs have allowed 2.92 goals per 60. That’s a difference of a goal per game in regulation — even before you factor in the offensive side of Makar’s arsenal.

Among NHL defensive tandems this postseason that have played at least 30 minutes together, the Makar-Devon Toews pairing still ranks fifth overall among playoff expected goals percentage (64%, with eight expected goals for and 4.5 goals expected against). That’s up from 13th a year ago (58.5%, 6.2 expected goals for and 4.4 against) and 14th in ’23-24 (58.3%, 6.3 expected goals for and 4.5 against).

“I guess the (heart) of the matter is, the numbers are what they are,” Olcyzk said of Makar. “His impact — they have such a deep team, they’re going to be able to get contributions in points from a lot of different guys. But he is always going to have an impact, and you always have to account for him, if you’re the other team. It’s just a matter of time before he gets on that heater and he has a four-or five-point game.”

There’s a fine blue line The Avalanche, however wounded, however shamed, however desperate, surely know better than to cross it.

T.J. Hughes was the most high-profile college free agent of this cycle, and after a decorated career at Michigan, he chose to sign with the Colorado Avalanche. His contract with the parent club starts next season, so he joined Letestu’s Colorado Eagles and quickly became an integral part of a deep postseason run.

“You go through the bio and I see a similar player to myself,” said Letestu, who played 567 NHL games and is in his first season as the Eagles’ head coach. “Somebody who played in the Alberta Junior League, an undersized right shot that did really well in college and signs a college free agent, so right away him and I have had some common ground.”

Hughes and the Eagles lost Game 1 of the Western Conference Final to the Chicago Wolves on Thursday night, but this is the deepest the club has advanced in the Calder Cup Playoffs since becoming an AHL franchise. Game 2 is Saturday night at Blue FCU Arena.

A four-year star at Michigan, Hughes helped the Wolverines to a pair of Big Ten championships and three trips to the Frozen Four. He could have left the program early, but decided to stay through his senior year because he wanted to graduate, trusted the Michigan staff to help him keep developing and wanted another shot at a national title.

That run ended when the University of Denver knocked the Wolverines out in a double-overtime classic semifinal. Two days later, he had signed with the Avalanche and was on a plane to Colorado.

“I think it’s a mix of a few things,” Hughes said about choosing the Avs. “One, just the coaching staff and the front office. They were expressing a lot of interest, and came to see me play a lot at Michigan. I think we built a great relationship over the year. Then obviously, the Colorado Eagles and the Colorado Avalanche — just two really good teams. I wanted to go play for a great team and try to find a spot that I kind of play similar to the way that they like to play. They like to play with the puck, play fast and make plays, so that was very appealing to me.

“Then, of course, Colorado is an amazing place to play and place to live. I’ve really liked my time here, just the weather and everything about Colorado and Loveland. Everything’s been great.”

The 24-year-old Hughes was a great player for the Brooks Bandits in the AJHL before Michigan. He played with current Eagles teammate Taylor Makar for two seasons and then won a league title in his third.

Hughes was not drafted but has remained a star at every level. He’s listed at 6 feet and 185 pounds, and he’s not a high-end skater. Hughes has made up for those perceived deficiencies with his brain and his skill level.

“His offensive IQ is certainly ahead of the rest of his game,” Letestu said. “I mean, that’s what got him noticed. That’s what gets him in the door.

“Right away you can see how smart he is, how he processes the game. He’s earned a lot of trust with me, obviously, immediately on the offensive side. That’s always going to be there, but he’s taking direction on the defensive side, trying to become more complete because he wants to be an NHL player. That’s the part of his game that he has to earn trust from (Jared Bednar) when he gets up there.”

The jump from NCAA hockey to the AHL has been a smooth one for Hughes. He played in two regular-season games for the Eagles and is now an integral part of their lineup in this postseason.

He has three goals and seven points in 11 games, including a beautiful assist in Game 1 against the Wolves. Hughes played on a line with Makar in Game 1. He’s also played with Gavin Brindley as well — another familiar face.

Hughes and Brindley were freshmen together at Michigan. Brindley left after two years, but they’re back together again after Colorado acquired Brindley in a trade last summer.

“Awesome. Yeah, it’s great to have him,” Brindley said. “He’s done a great job stepping in here. He’s one of the big pieces on this team now. It’s been just awesome to see his face every day and interact with him at the pro level and try to help him with anything he needs.

“I think his IQ is elite. The way he thinks the game — he’s not the fastest player, but man, he thinks the game at a high level. Kudos to him. He’s had a long season and I’m sure he’s a little drained, but he doesn’t look like it on a day-to-day basis.”

Hughes said that having Brindley and Makar here made the transition much easier for him. He was the captain at Michigan, and his former coach Brandon Naurato raved about Hughes when the Avs signed him.

Multiple people in the organization offered similar praise for Hughes since he arrived in Loveland. A “first in, last out” type of guy, a rink rat, a gym rat — Letestu said he’s not just easy to coach but that Hughes craves it.

There could be a place for Hughes with the Avalanche next season, depending on how this offseason plays out. He and his old friends Brindley and Makar might be the three guys on this Eagles team with the best chance of earning a spot in training camp next year.

For now, Hughes is chasing another championship. The Avs have had great success with college free agents, most notably Logan O’Connor and Sam Malinski.

Hughes could be up next.

“(The AHL) is definitely a step up. It’s been a little faster, a little heavier, and just trying to adjust each game, and just trying to do what I can to help the team win,” Hughes said. “This is an amazing experience. Just planning to have a great offseason and continue to work on things I need to work on. Wherever I end up, just trying to make an impact and help the team win and do my thing and do my part.

“I have such a great passion for this game of hockey, so I just want to keep grinding and keep playing.”

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¶¶Òõap 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.”

It is time to put this series to bed.

Holding the equivalent of a 16 at the blackjack table, the Avs impressively shifted the odds in their favor Sunday night before revealing why this city is nicknamed Lost Wages with a second-period gag for the ages.

T-Mobile Arena provided a stage for a character-defining victory. Instead, the talented Avs did the unthinkable, proving Game 2 was not a fluke by falling flat on their red faces again.

Sunday night was worse, a new nadir.

The Avs squandered a 3-0 first-period lead. To Las Vegas. Not the 1977 Montreal Canadiens. Not the 1984 Edmonton Oilers. To Las Vegas? Yes, Las Vegas!

All the Avs had to do was tie a knot and hold on for 40 minutes. Instead, they collapsed, went splat in one of the worst playoff periods in franchise history.

Colorado boasted a 74-1 record when leading by three goals in a playoff game. The Knights were 0-19 when trailing by that deficit. So much for the past predicting the future.

Colorado made Las Vegas look like the Legion of Broom. That is all that is left for the Avs now, showing enough pride to avoid the indignity of a sweep.

Does it really matter at this point?

Only four NHL teams have ever won a postseason series of any kind in any round when trailing 3-0. There is no reason to believe the Avs will pull off a miracle.

Not with Cale Makar compromised — he provided a solid effort given his shoulder injury — and Nathan MacKinnon hobbled.

The Golden Knights are a bigger, stronger team.

But the Avs suffered a foundation-shaking loss because of things that go well beyond how players fill out uniforms.

Blame the MacKinnon right knee injury if it makes you feel better. The Avs were sliding into the abyss long before he blocked Shea Theodore’s shot with his leg in the second period, leaving him crumpled on the ice.

Moments after MacKinnon got hurt, Keegan Kolesar deflected a shot off the pipe, then poked the rebound past goalie Scott Wedgewood to tie the score at 3. If you haven’t heard of him, other than his relatives and Golden Knights’ fans, few have. It was his first point of the postseason, eloquently capturing the gravity of the Avs’ meltdown.

Magicians on The Strip don’t make things disappear this easily.

The common thread in the folding? Defensive breakdowns. And Marty Necas and Brock Nelson remain firmly in the witness protection program.

The Avs looked cooked, done in Denver. But in the hours before the puck dropped, they spoke with confidence about overcoming the sordid history of teams dropping the first two home games in the conference finals.

Why? They were 17-2 in their last 19 road games and won twice in Las Vegas during the regular season. That’s something, right? Nope.

“We won the President¶¶Òõap Trophy for a reason,” forward Logan O’Connor said five hours before the puck dropped. “It¶¶Òõap time to fight for our lives.”

If you haven’t noticed, numbers are irrelevant in this matchup.

The Knights mocked the trends, while the Avs mocked their own fans.

The Avs didn’t need to be better skaters. They needed to be tougher. They needed to put a fist to a face to stop a rally. An elbow to the chops to slow a rush. A hook to place the Knights on their heels.

Instead, the Avs were left with their heads spinning.

The Golden Knights opened the second period on a power play, and Mark Stone, returning from injury for his first action, scored in 19 seconds.

The place they called the Fortress erupted. The crowd was back into the game. And so were the Golden Knights.

This was the time to make a statement. And the Avs did. With a message so wrong, it is time to wonder how many of these players are the right fit moving forward.

The Avs could not clear the puck, a common theme over the final two periods. William Karlsson scored. It was his first goal. It was also the lone goal of the postseason for Kolesar.

And Tomas Hertl put the Avs out of their misery with the go-ahead shot at the 8:21 mark of the third, pushing the Golden Knights within a whisper of their third Stanley Cup Final in nine years.

Where were the role players for the Avs to shine? I will hang up and listen.

Everything about this loss came with an asterisk. The Avs blew a first-quarter lead. Something they never do. They squandered a second-period lead on Friday, something they had never done.

The Avs were dominant during the season, but no longer resemble that team. They cannot finish. Even when they play well, they cannot sustain it. Talk all you want about the positives, like three starburst goals from Gabe Landeskog, Nazem Kadri and Jack Drury.

They went from great to grate. Again.

It seems unthinkable for a team with this talent. But Colorado is not good enough or tough enough to beat the Golden Knights.

If Las Vegas is “Forged in Gold,” their playoff motto plastered in nearby hotels, the Avs are “Forged in Old.” They look tired, beaten. They didn’t have a shot on goal for nearly 15 minutes in the third period.

With Makar and MacKinnon not themselves, this was the moment for Necas and Nelson to pull their weight. They have been anchors.

Necas had flashes, but still did not score. And Nelson has been arguably the worst player on the ice for either team.

The Avs talked with bravado. The Golden Knights played with it.

“It wasn’t a great first period but we knew we could do it.” Hertl said. “We have done it so many times we never quit. A massive game for us.”

Sam Malinski — of course it was Malinski, the replacement for an injured Cale Makar on Colorado’s top defensive pairing — eyed a loose puck in the offensive zone. He could have charged the right circle, could have made an aggressive play on the puck. For barely an instant, he appeared to have the advantage in a potential footrace to it.

He skidded to a stop instead, then wheeled around, trying not to lose a step the other direction.

“It looks like we’re gonna get to it,” Avalanche coach Jared Bednar said later. “We don’t get to it. They get to it. And that’s how the rush starts to develop.”

Ivan Barbashev carried the puck out of his defensive zone, and seven seconds later, it was in Colorado’s net. For the first time in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, the Avs’ mortality was staring them in the face. Two minutes later, their dream season was on life support.

With two goals in 127 seconds, the Vegas Golden Knights upended the Western Conference Final and left Ball Arena in stunned silence Friday night. The first one leveled the score with 10:45 remaining in the third period of Game 2. The second gave Vegas a 2-1 edge and eventually a 2-0 series lead.

“We felt really good about our game,” captain Gabriel Landeskog said, “and then a short little lapse for two minutes, and they scored two goals.â€�

Bednar didn’t feel like his team played poorly in a second consecutive home loss. But the hardly perceivable details, the miniscule mistakes piled up to cost Colorado a game that meant everything. There were the opportunities to score an insurance goal before Vegas broke through, the two power plays with a 1-0 lead. And then there were the moments that sparked both Golden Knights goals.

Malinski’s brief hesitation resulted in a 3-on-2 rush for Vegas, with the young defenseman skating for his life to take away an angle from Barbashev. The Avs were scrambling to get back and cover every threat. The puck drifted across to Jack Eichel, who snapped a shot off the far post and into the net before Devon Toews could close in on him — a shot that Knights goalie Carter Hart “saw him working on this morning.”

“Two net drivers (were on the rush),” Avalanche goalie Scott Wedgewood said. “Read that first. (Eichel) kind of stalled. … Just over the pad and the arm, post and in. Perfect shot, but not a perfect goal. Back (side) pressure and feeling that maybe kept me a little bit too much (on the) strong side, and he toe-dragged it. One you want back.”

“We get back in time,” Bednar lamented, “but we don’t close it out.”

The Avs couldn’t manufacture any momentum in the offensive zone as they tried to pull themselves together. So often this season, a lead was definitive. All of a sudden, a tie meant doubt.

“Definitely think it stung,” winger Logan O’Connor said. “Try and be a mature group about it. Try and get right back to our game-plan. I think after the first one, we didn’t do that quick enough. And then the second one happens. And that’s on us to make a better adjustment there and sort of forget about what has happened and move past it. That’s something we can learn from.”

Much like how the first goal stemmed from Colorado’s failure to maintain the zone, the second arose from a botched opportunity to enter it. Valeri Nichushkin was past center-ice when the puck was poked away from him from behind, handing Vegas possession — a moment of weakness for a power forward whose every move is made with conviction, usually.

Then in the defensive zone, Avalanche teammates Toews and Brock Nelson got tangled up along the boards as Toews tried to clear the puck. The attempt was blocked. It took a deflection toward the middle of the ice, where Eichel passed to Barbashev for a one-timer. Both goals rang the post on their way in.

“Some of it is doing the right thing but not hard enough. Some of it is, there’s decisions there, too. Like, Val easily had time to put that puck in,” Bednar said. “And I don’t want to just single out Val, but that was a goal, right? And then we have it back a couple more times — we don’t get it out (of our zone). So we don’t get it in. We don’t get it out.”

“I think our puck decisions lacked some maturity at times,” O’Connor said. “And therefore we deviated from the game plan that had given us some success throughout the game.”

Whatever it was that abandoned the Avs — maturity, decisiveness, discipline — the price to pay was a season on the brink. After 127 seconds of whiplash, they have a two hours of flight time to Vegas to regain their bearings.

It wasn’t enough to play a good game on home ice. Every Avalanche error was sufficiently punished in Game 2.

“It¶¶Òõap a fine margin for error, the difference of winning and losing,” Bednar said. “There’s obviously things in the game, especially when you gave up two in the third period, that you don’t like.”

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¶¶Òõap 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¶¶Òõap 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¶¶Òõap 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¶¶Òõap 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¶¶Òõap 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.

The Vegas Golden Knights got goals from a journeyman defenseman and the top two shooters in this postseason en route to an 4-2 victory Wednesday night at Ball Arena in Game 1 of the Western Conference Final. Carter Hart made 36 saves against the Cale Makar-less Avalanche.

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

Scott Wedgewood, who replaced Mackenzie Blackwood in an electric Game 5 comeback win to end the previous round, returned to the starting role for the Avs. He made 24 saves.

This is the first time in this postseason that Colorado is behind in a series. The Avalanche were atop the NHL standings every day from Nov. 1 until the end of the season, capturing the Central Division, Western Conference and Presidents’ Trophy as the top team in the league.

The Avs generated plenty of shots on goal, but also missed the net on some of their best opportunities, and Hart made some key saves while the Golden Knights built their lead.

There was hope for a second straight miracle comeback after Colorado scored twice in the third period, but Nic Dowd beat two Avs players in a race for the puck with the home side’s net empty and scored to end any doubt.

“I thought it was good at times and not good enough at others,” Avs coach Jared Bednar said. “I didn’t love our puck play tonight, like our execution coming out of our zone, through the neutral zone a little bit, even o-zone play. We gave them a handful of odd-man rushes that came off our turnovers and missed execution even if we were doing the right thing.

“I thought we had a lot of juice and energy in the third period to try and fight our way back into it, but we’re going to have to play a full 60 better than we did tonight, especially with the puck.”

Vegas defenseman Dylan Coghlan opened the scoring at 12:29 of the second period. Colorado’s second line had a couple of great looks, but the visitors counter-attacked at the end of a long shift. Valeri Nichushkin went to the bench and Brock Nelson fell down below the goal line, which allowed Vegas a 4-on-3 and the fourth guy in the zone — Coghlan — collected a pass from ex-Avs forward Brandon Saad and had all kinds of space to pick his spot on Scott Wedgewood.

The shot, which went through Wedgewood, fooled the Avalanche goaltender.

“I just read high glove,” Wedgewood said. “He got a lot of pace on it … just hard to close it once you’re spread. I don’t know if it was spinning on his stick, but he got a lot of pace on it. His release just wasn’t going there, so if it was (intended), it was a hell of a fake. Just read one thing and unfortunately wasn’t able to close up in time.”

It was Coghlan’s first career Stanley Cup Playoffs goal, and his first in the NHL since the 2021-22. Coghlan left Vegas after that season, played for Carolina and Winnipeg and came back to the Golden Knights as a free agent in the offseason.

With Ross Colton in the penalty box after Rasmus Andersson sold a roughing penalty in front of his own net, Vegas doubled its lead. Pavel Dorofeyev, one of the league’s best on the power play this season, snapped a shot past Wedgewood at 15:02 of the second. Mitch Marner — the leading point producer in this postseason — made a great play to fend off Logan O’Connor as he skated towards the right corner, and was able to get the puck back to the right circle for Dorofeyev, who scored his playoffs-leading 10th goal.

Dorofeyev now has 47 goals this year between the regular season and playoffs in 95 games, and 24 of them have come with Vegas on the power play.

When Colorado’s second opportunity with the extra man expired early in the third period, Vegas took advantage of a fortuitous bounce to extend its lead. It probably wasn’t a great decision for Sam Malinski to shoot from the top of the zone just as the penalty expired, but his shot was blocked into the neutral zone … and right to Ben Hutton as he came out of the box.

That led to a 2-on-1 for Vegas, and Brett Howden knocked the puck out of the air with his glove but also got his stick on it in the blue paint just before it cross the goal line to make it 3-0 for the visitors.

It was Howden’s ninth goal of this postseason, one behind Dorofeyev for the league lead. No one else has more seven in this tournament.

Nichushkin got the Avs on the board with 14:06 remaining in the third period. Two Vegas defenders collided with each other, leaving Nichushkin open near the front of the net. Nazem Kadri sent the puck to him, and Nichushkin was able to redirect the pass with his stick between his legs for his second goal of this postseason.

Avs captain Gabe Landeskog added Colorado’s second goal with 2:20 left in the third period. With the Avs on the power play and Wedgewood at the bench, MacKinnon undressed Vegas defenseman Brayden McNabb in the right corner with a quick cut, then went to the net and fed Landeskog for his fourth goal of this postseason.

After spending all season working from ahead, the Avs will need to find some answers ahead of a critical Game 2 on Friday night back here at Ball Arena.

“Just our personnel and what we’ve done all year,” Wedgewood said of why his team will be confident. “We bounce right back, clean up a few things and we’ll find ways to score. Honestly, I had no real issues with our game. It was just that they capitalized early and we had to fight back.”

FOOTNOTES: Makar missed the second Stanley Cup Playoffs game of his career, his first since he was suspended for Game 5 against Seattle in 2023. Malinski and Artturi Lehkonen returned to the lineup for the Avs after missing the final two games of the second-round series against the Wild. Mark Stone did not play for Vegas, the fourth straight game he’s missed.