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.

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.

Everyone thinks Jared Bednar is a great guy. But he is no longer a good fit for the Avalanche.

He is the best coach in franchise history. Yet, running it back would be the worst thing the organization could do.

Bednar’s resume saved him when the Avs fizzled for three consecutive years after winning the Stanley Cup.

What happened in this Western Conference Final hit different.

The best team in hockey was clobbered. The Avs were broomed away like so many cigarette butts and plastic daiquiri cups, the seventh No. 1 seed swept in NHL history.

BTS came back and performed at Allegiant Stadium across the interstate. BTA (belt to bleep) returned in Game 4 at T-Mobile Arena.

The Golden Knights, so underwhelming and uninspiring that they fired their coach with eight games remaining in the season, put the Avs out of their misery with a 2-1 victory.

Leave the miracles to Mike Eruzione, the 2004 Boston Red Sox and that perm-coiffed dude who married Selena Gomez.

This Avs’ exit needs to come with a major announcement, that president Joe Sakic and general manager Chris MacFarland have decided to dismiss Bednar with one year remaining on his contract.

There is no joy in writing this. It is not all Bednar’s fault that the Avs picked a bad week to play their worst hockey, failing to win a game in a playoff series for the first time since 2008. They almost got shut out in a closeout.

So, let’s meet in the middle and say half the onus is on Bednar because of a system that no longer works in the postseason against defensive-minded, possession-oriented pests like the Dallas Stars and Knights.

Just like their matchup against Las Vegas, the Avs are boxed in, frustrated, with no easy way out. Some version of this problem arose when Seattle and Dallas eliminated the Avs, but there was compelling evidence to stick with the coach, given Valeri Nichushkin’s absences and Gabe Landeskog’s injury.

There is no good reason for what just happened over the past six days. Only excuses.

Are the Avs, a team that won 16 more games than the Golden Knights during the regular season, so fragile that they stood no chance without Cale Makar for two games and Nathan MacKinnon compromised for a few periods?

All we talked about was their depth, starting in October and louder after the trade deadline in March when MacFarland cemented his executive-of-the-year status.

They were a Noah’s Ark team — two of everything. And no player could sway the outcome in one game? Embarrassing.

Captain Mark Stone missed the first two games of this series, and it did not undermine Las Vegas. He was a catalytic force on Tuesday, catching a long lob in stride behind the defense in the first period, most notably Nazem Kadri, and whipping it around Mackenzie Blackwood’s left leg for a 1-0 lead.

If not for Blackwood’s acrobatics, the Avs would have been routed.

Still, the Golden Knights were winning.

After the particularly disturbing Game 3 loss, when the Avs lost for only the second time in 76 playoff games when leading by three goals, Colorado resorted to whimpering.

Down 3-0, Bednar kept pointing to the metrics, insisting they were dead even. OK, Kenny Atkinson. How about we simmer down on the analytics and focus more on the manalytics.

When the Avs needed a big hit, big shot or big stop, they failed to deliver. That is what defines the postseason: shining in the clutch. Under Bednar’s watch, the Avs wilted under the LED lights washing over Bruno Mars Drive and The Strip.

The players are not blameless.

MacKinnon did not produce a goal in the series. Marty Necas, paid to provide the big performances previously delivered by Mikko Rantanen, had one in the postseason.

Brock Nelson aged like Keith Richards, and never looked the same after returning from the Olympics. Devon Toews made costly mistakes unbecoming of a player of his caliber. Kadri did not plug in the power play — 1-for-10 against Las Vegas. And even before he got hurt, Nichushkin did nothing of note.

So many breakdowns. So many errors in their own zone.

Does some of that fall on Bednar? Sure.

“At the end of the day, coaches are coaches,” Makar said in a somber postgame locker room. “He means so much to this team, and he’s allowed us to play our games and process that from years and years for this. He deserves a lot of credit for getting us to this point. Again, he’s not playing the game, he’s not out on the ice.

He’s giving us everything we possibly can, information-wise, to go out there and be the best we can be, and unfortunately … you feel like you let people down. He’s one of those guys that you feel like worked so hard, the whole coaching staff, everybody. You just feel like you let them down a little bit.”

Bednar could have changed line combinations sooner. Could have tweaked the power play lineup. Could have challenged bad calls with ferocious intensity. Could have pulled Scott Wedgewood in favor of Blackwood after the second goal on Sunday.

In reality, there is no single reason why Bednar should go. It is the aggregate.

For the past four years, the Avs have not only failed to raise another Cup — we can all agree one is not enough with this core — they have not reached the championship round.

Stand pat, always an option for Kroenke Sports, and the Avs might be a top seed again. But the regular season is not the problem. The Avs have aced those pop quizzes.

The playoffs are the final. Or the Final, if you will. That is a huge part of the grade when entering with title-or-bust expectations.

Since 2022, they are 0-for-4.

Truth is, if two-time champion Mike Shanahan can get fired by the Broncos, no professional Colorado sports coach should be safe forever. Shanahan, the GM, got Shanahan, the coach, canned. Bednar’s scheme is what could do him in.

For those defending Bednar, it is understandable. It is also misguided.

The Avs are stuck with multiple big contracts — MacKinnon, soon-to-be Makar, Landeskog, Necas, Kadri, Nelson, Toews, Blackwood, Sam Malinski — that will limit their movement unless they are willing to eat money.

It is much easier to switch out the person standing behind the bench than those sitting on it.

This could go one of two ways, like most things. The Avs thank Bednar for his services and hire a young genius like DU’s David Carle or a veteran like Bruce Cassidy. Then, they win a Cup.

Or Bednar succeeds elsewhere, and the Avs fade, making it clear the players, not the system, were the problem.

It is worth finding out.

The feeling is that Avs officials never want to pull the plug on Bednar because they like him and love how he works with everyone (which is why his situation is not comparable to Michael Malone with the Nuggets).

Whatever the case, ownership has given Sakic and MacFarland freedom to try everything the past two seasons with roster upgrades. After this playoff meltdown, they now have a responsibility they can no longer shirk.

As hard as it might be, it is time for Bednar to go because sticking with him, as the series with Las Vegas showed, is a losing bet.

The other half of the media corps that planned to go into the home dressing room was still waiting. Vegas’ postgame locker room access hadn’t even started yet.

It felt like a metaphor for everything that has happened in the past five days. Everything has gone wrong for the Avs so fast, and in such a stunning fashion. Everything about the situation, given what has transpired since mid-September, just felt so … surreal.

“You knew it was going to be a battle,” Avs coach Jared Bednar said. “To this point in the year at this start of the series, we’ve always been able to sort of make that next play, make one more play than the other team to try to carve out victories. To have it go the other way three games in a row … this is sports.

“It doesn’t shock me. It does surprise me a little bit that we haven’t been able to come up with it in the first three games. That����ap the way it goes. Who knows? Maybe we’ll come up with it in the next three games.”

So here are the 2025-26 Avalanche. For more than six months, the Avs set the pace in the NHL. Then it unraveled in fewer than six days.

Now they are down 3-0 in the Western Conference Final to the surging Golden Knights. Four teams in NHL history have erased a 3-0 series deficit to win a series, including two in the past 50 years.

What has gone wrong? A lot of things, all at once. Some large, some small, but it all adds up to this surreal, stunning situation.

1. Scott Wedgewood has been one of the NHL’s great stories this year. The rise of The Lumberyard has delighted Avs fans.

There’s no way to sugarcoat it. Carter Hart has outplayed Wedgewood through the first three games of this series. Hart’s goals saved above expected has been better in all three games. For the series, Hart is plus-3.0, while Wedgewood is minus-1.66.

There can be some variance in that, especially with such a small sample. Other Avs issues are contributing to Wedgewood’s plight. But with all the chatter from both sides about how tight the series has been, how even the chances have been, and how opportunistic Vegas has been while Colorado has not, the easiest solution to that is for Colorado’s goaltending to be better.

For the playoffs, here are the goals saved above expected for each team still participating in this tournament, per MoneyPuck:

Montreal is at 11.3, Carolina is at 8.7, Vegas is at 7.2 and Colorado is at 0.1. Wedgewood (0.4) and Mackenzie Blackwood (-0.3) have just been … fine. If everything else was clicking for the Avs, the narrative would be that the Lumberyard has made just enough timely saves to make it work.

Everything else is not fine. One of the members of The Lumberyard needs to get hot. That’s the simplest way back into this series.

2. This is the only issue on the list that is partly out of the Avs’ control. They are a banged-up club now. The injuries might be too much. The Minnesota Wild players are not playing hockey right now and still have a what-if nagging at them about injuries. The Avs might feel that way soon, too.

The obvious ones are Nathan MacKinnon and Valeri Nichushkin, who were injured in Game 3. No updates on them from Bednar the day before Game 4. But Colorado’s injury issues likely go far beyond those two.

We know Cale Makar is playing through injury after he couldn’t dress in Games 1 and 2. Injury information is akin to classified state secrets during the playoffs, but the minutes played in a critical Game 3 told part of the story.

Sam Malinski, who the club desperately needed more from with Makar out, has struggled at times against Vegas after missing the end of the Minnesota series. He played 12:57 in Game 3. It’s difficult to imagine that number would be so low if he were healthy.

Artturi Lehkonen, a longtime playoff killer, has no points and just five shots on goal in this series. He missed the same two games that Malinski did. When MacKinnon and Nichushkin were both in various states of availability Sunday night, Lehkonen played less than Martin Necas, Brock Nelson, Gabe Landeskog, and Nazem Kadri. It’s hard to imagine that happening if he were healthy.

It’s possible that the Avs are just too hurt in this series. It’s not the only problem, but it’s a significant one.

3. Vegas is still doing what Dallas has done at times in the past couple of postseasons. A lot of the numbers under the hood are either fine or better for the Avalanche. A consistent theme is the Avs are not far off, just a play here, a goal or a save there. That’s true, which again points back to Hart making one more important save than Wedgewood, but also why the Avs might not be converting that one extra chance they need.

Colorado has produced 58.97% of the shot attempts in this series. The Avs have 59.54% of the scoring chances, per Natural Stat Trick. But not all chances are created equal. Vegas has produced 53.06% of the expected goals and 12 of the 18 actual goals. It’s 9 out of 15 if we exclude the three empty netters.

Vegas has still been able to keep Colorado to the outside, particularly in key parts of these games. The Avs had one high-danger scoring chance at 5-on-5 in the third period Sunday night. That was one more than the third period in Game 2.

The volume would translate, with one more good bounce or one less-than-stellar night from Hart. It hasn’t. Better quality on the chances created is another path to breathing life into a potential comeback.

The power play isn’t going to get its own spot on this list, but it can obviously be better as well.

4A. A week ago, Necas was fresh off a couple of great games against Minnesota and had 11 points in nine games — second most on the Avs. Three games later, he’s still second on the team in points, but the number next to that is now a far easier target for people who are searching for what’s gone wrong.

Necas had 38 goals in the regular season. He has one in the playoffs. If he were still racking up assists and making great plays happen like at the end of the Minnesota series, one goal wouldn’t be an issue. Jack Eichel has two goals in this postseason.

But three quiet offensive games, with just four shots on goal at 5-on-5 when the team is struggling to create offense, make Necas’ lack of goals an easy target.

“Yeah, I don’t honestly look at media at all,” Necas said. “So I don’t know what����ap going on over there. Obviously, I want to be scoring more, more goals for sure for the team. It starts with tomorrow.”

4B. It’s a similar story for Nelson — 33 goals in the regular season, two in the playoffs. But he also has only one assist, not 11 like Necas. Nelson hit the crossbar on a great chance in Game 3, but that doesn’t count as a shot on goal and he’s only got one in the past two games combined.

Given the other guys who might not be available or are trying to play through injuries, the two guys who combined for 71 goals this year will need a big moment or three. That’s another way the Avs could find some footing in this series.

“I think even more frustrating, just given how the games kind of played out, too,” Nelson said of his lack of production. “Have to just continue to believe that you’re going to get more looks, capitalize on it, be a difference maker and turn it (around).

“I think it’s just having that belief individually for myself to step up, be more of an impact offensively. And I think as a group the belief that we were one of the best teams in league all year, we’re capable of coming back and obviously just starts with one game.”

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����ap Trophy for a reason,” forward Logan O’Connor said five hours before the puck dropped. “It����ap 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.”

Then a three-goal lead disappeared as quickly as it was created, another superstar was injured, and this once-dream season is officially on the brink.

The Vegas Golden Knights rallied after yielding the first three goals of this game, with Tomas Hertl providing the game-winner in a 5-3 victory in Game 3 of this best-of-seven series at T-Mobile Arena.

“It’s frustrating,” said Avs star Cale Makar, who returned after missing the first two games of this series. “I mean, we’ve been on the other side of that, obviously coming back from that, and it’s going to happen. But it can’t happen at this time of the year. I felt like they got some lucky bounces, but we’ve got to find a little bit better way to kind of challenge ourselves in those moments and come out of that.

“Just unfortunate. We still had a chance, obviously, in the third there.”

Vegas leads the series 3-0. The Golden Knights can complete an absolutely stunning sweep of the Presidents’ Trophy winners on their home ice on Tuesday night.

To make matters worse, Avs superstar Nathan MacKinnon was injured blocking a shot during the second period. He tried to play through it after taking a hard shot from Shea Theodore off the outside of his right knee, but his mobility was clearly limited.

MacKinnon took one normal shift in the third period, then went on the ice for Colorado’s power play. His three even-strength shifts after the injury totaled a combined 88 seconds, and the Avs were without the NHL’s leading goal scorer this season while trying to come back until MacKinnon went out again for a 6-on-5 shift.

That shift ended with Brett Howden’s empty-net goal to seal the Vegas victory. MacKinnon still managed to play 4:05 in the third period, but that’s maybe 40 percent of what he’d play when healthy in this situation.

Avs coach Jared Bednar also noted that Valeri Nichushkin was injured in the third period. Nichuhskin did not play in the final 22 minutes of this contest.

“Well, it����ap low,” Bednar said when asked about the emotions of his team after a loss like that. “As low as it can get, because it����ap a big hill to climb. The next 24-to-36 hours is for … you’ve got to find a way to get over it, regroup and go again.”

A tale of two periods

The first period couldn’t have gone much better for the visitors. The second period couldn’t have gone much worse.

Colorado blew a three-goal lead in less than 13 minutes. Vegas scored three times in the period on just eight shots.

“Everything,” Bednar said when asked what fell apart after the first. “Yeah, the first 9 minutes (of the second) kind of looked like portions of Game 1 for me and parts of Game 2 where we mismanaged the puck on breakouts. Then they just got more competitive and we didn’t stay with that intensity for nine minutes. A little bit of communication, some talk and we just didn’t dig in and match their intensity at the start of the second quick enough.”

The Golden Knights began the middle period on the power play. It took them 19 seconds to convert. Vegas captain Mark Stone, who returned after missing the past five games with an injury, tapped home a pass from Mitch Marner near the right post after a perfectly executed dump-in and retrieval.

William Karlsson made it a 3-2 game at 4:05 of the period. Marner shot the puck from the right point. Scott Wedgewood made the first save, but the rebound bounced off Parker Kelly’s stick and right to Karlsson, who whipped a shot inside the near post before the Avs goaltender could get square to him.

It was the first goal of the postseason for Karlsson, who is one of the original Vegas ‘Misfits’ from the inaugural season, but missed a huge chunk of this year before returning during the last round.

MacKinnon took a hard shot off the outside of his right knee with 7:54 remaining in the period. He was writhing on the ice for 9 seconds before play was stopped.

Keegan Kolesar tied the game at 3-3 on the next shift. Kolesar deflected a shot from the top of the zone by Dylan Coghlan off the right post and then tapped the rebound into the net for his first goal of this postseason.

“To me it����ap the full 60(-minute) effort, competitiveness at times, puck moving and some turnovers that can get you,” Bednar said. “They’re going to make it difficult on you, but you have to try create enough chances and finish off enough to win a hockey game.”

Colorado’s offense roared to life at the start of this contest after two rough nights back home at Ball Arena.

Landeskog put the Avs in front just 3:21 into this contest. Devon Toews beat Noah Hanifin to a loose puck in the neutral zone, which created a 2-on-1. Hanifin took a penalty trying to defend Toews as he took the puck to the net, but Landeskog was there to put home the rebound.

That is five goals for Landeskog in the 2026 Stanley Cup Playoffs, just another chapter in his remarkable comeback story.

That was also Colorado’s first lead of the series. Nazem Kadri, moved up to the second line and to the wing for the first time in this postseason, doubled the advantage at 7:03 with one of the best team-effort goals of the season.

Josh Manson faked out Nic Dowd behind the Colorado net to free up space for the defenseman to hit Martin Necas with a tape-to-tape outlet pass beyond the red line. Necas split two defenders, then left the puck for Kadri, who buried a shot from the inside of the left circle for his third of the postseason.

Vegas thought it cut the lead in half during a Golden Knights power play. Pavel Dorofeyev batted the puck out of mid-air with a cross-checking motion near the edge of the Colorado crease. An official immediately waived off the goal, citing that Dorofeyev put the puck into the net with his hand.

After a lengthy review, the officials said the call on the ice was correct. Even if they had reversed it and awarded the goal, Colorado may have challenged for a high stick.

Either way, the Avs extended their lead to 3-0 just 43 seconds later. Parker Kelly backhanded the puck out of the Avs zone and two Vegas players missed it when trying to keep it in, leaving Jack Drury alone for a shorthanded breakaway. His deke fooled Vegas goaltender Carter Hart, and the Avs had a three-goal lead with 6:45 remaining in the opening period.

That lead was gone a little less than 20 minutes later. The season will end Tuesday night if the Avs can’t find a way to extend this series and get back to Ball Arena for a potential Game 5.

“You can go so many different ways, but we need to play better,” Landeskog said. “Simple as that. We need better, and we need to find a way to score more goals, and I thought we did a good job of that tonight. Obviously, build a lead, and then they claw their way into it. They’re a good team over there.”

Please, dude. The faster, the better. The fat lady is doing arpeggios backstage at the Bellagio. The bookies on Fremont Street are busy counting chickens. The Avalanche are eight wins from sleeping with a Stanley Cup and two losses from waking up in Cancun. If Game 1 was an elbow to the nose, Game 2 was a 5-iron to the crown jewels.

“That’s part of the game, when you can (kill off a penalty) and get momentum off of it,” Vegas defenseman Rasmus Andersson told me after his Golden Knights put the favored Avs in an 0-2 Western Conference Final hole — in Denver, for the love of Pete Forsberg — in advance of Sunday’s Game 3 at T-Mobile Arena. “And we just stuck with it.”

The Avalanche power play, meanwhile, is back to being stuck in neutral, spinning burgundy and blue tires in the mud.

Colorado, with an extra man, was already a hard watch with a healthy Cale Makar dancing along the blue line. Without him, it reads a lot like a Sean Payton script: Pass, pass, pass, pass, pass, pass, pass, pass, punt.

Two power plays Friday. At least two chances to build on a scrappy 1-0 lead, to put some space between you and John Tortorella’s master plan. They got nothing. Nada. Zip.

After a workable 25% PP conversion rate in the first two rounds of the Stanley Cup Playoffs, the Avs are 1 for 5 with the man advantage in two games against the Golden Knights. Friday evening offered some serious Dallas 2025 vibes, water torture on ice.

“I think back on some big moments, 4-on-4, we’re in the zone for a minute plus, we get (Nathan) MacKinnon from the slot, we miss the net,” Avs coach Jared Bednar said. “We get (Devon Toews) from the slot, we miss the net, we get (Valeri) Nichushkin coming downhill, we miss the net. We’re going to have to force them to make some difficult saves.”

They’re going to have to make Carter Hart — the Vegas netminder who’s been the best player of these opening two games — actually work for it.

At some point, they’re going to have to make Torts — who’s coaching giant concentric circles around Bedsy right now, minus captain Mark Stone — pull out his whiteboard and start scribbling on the fly. They’re going to have to think about taking Devon Toews (who piled up 29 minutes of ice time) and Nazem Kadri off of the PP unit and plopping bigger bodies in front of a too-hot Hart.

Coming into the Western Conference Final, the Golden Knights were 6-2 when holding playoff foes without a power play goal — and 2-2 when the opposition managed at least one. Yet the Avs’ power play without Makar at the point is more or less what the Broncos’ offense looks like when Jarrett Stidham’s at the controls. Against a real defense, you’re toast.

“I think our PK has been really good all the playoffs, honestly,” said Andersson, who led a grindy Vegas defense with 36 grindier shifts and logged an assist on the empty-netter that sealed a 3-1 win. “We’ve done a good job with getting the momentum back.”

They stuck a proverbial dagger between the Avs’ shoulder blades at the end of the middle stanza. A slashing call on Vegas’ Shea Theodore put Colorado a man up with 1:18 left in the second period while nursing a 1-0 lead.

With 27 seconds left in the frame, captain Gabriel Landeskog corralled a nifty feed from teammate Nathan MacKinnon from behind the Golden Knights goal — but couldn’t land a point-blank look. A Brett Kulak slapper 51 seconds into the third period was stoned by Hart, allowing the guests to keep hanging around. And hanging around.

“I mean, they (the Avs) have a lot of firepower on that PP,” Andersson explained, “so you try to stick to the game plan (from) before and then execute it.”

“Could you see the frustration mounting when they couldn’t convert?” I wondered.

“I mean, that’s a question for them, honestly,” Andersson replied. “When we have a power play, obviously, you always want to score, but … I feel like if you can get some momentum off of it, it’s good.”

The momentum now wears a home sweater that’s roughly the same color as one of Taking an 0-2 deficit into Vegas is like trying to swim the Blue Mesa Reservoir with a bowling ball strapped to your right ankle. Per ESPN, NHL clubs that go down 0-2 on home ice in conference finals eventually lost 20 of 21 series. Colorado had faced an 0-2 hole in its Stanley Cup history nine times prior to 2026 — and went on to win just three of those matchups (3-6).

The Avs wore a look on the other bench Friday as if they knew the odds. A look that said, “We’re cooked” almost as soon as Vegas’ second goal of the night, this one via Ivan Barbashev, lit the lamp with 8:38 left to play.

What’s puzzling is about that is how many times we’ve seen the Avs get punched before — against the Kings, literally, and against the Wild, figuratively — over the past month, only for the guys to remember they’re the Avs, pick themselves off the canvas and start swinging back.

This version of Colorado, by contrast, looks oddly resigned at the first sign of any real trouble. We don’t have Cale. They have Torts. What the heck are we supposed to do now?

That’s on Bednar, Makar, or no Makar. The Avs with Cale believed they could come back from any deficit. The Avs without him seem starved for faith, starved for goals, starved for self-belief.

“It����ap a fine margin for error,” Bednar said. “The difference of winning and losing.”

Right now, those margins are mental, messy and massive. And the fat lady is on in five.

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.”