DALLAS — It would be hard not to compare and contrast the current state of the Colorado Avalanche to what the organization faced after Game 4 against the Dallas Stars a season ago.
For all intents and purposes, the 2023-24 season, or at the very least Colorado’s championship aspirations, ended the day of Game 4 against the Stars.
Valeri Nichushkin was suspended for at least six months just hours before puck drop. Devon Toews was sick and a late scratch. The Stars easily handled a shook Avs team to take a commanding 3-1 series lead before winning in six games.
Fast forward almost a year, and Game 4 against the Stars was one of the best games Colorado has played this season. After three games where the margins were razor thin, the Avalanche dominated Game 4 in every fashion, and this series is now 2-2 with Game 5 on Monday night at American Airlines Center.
Regardless of who wins Game 5, the Avs are in so much better shape, both physically and emotionally, to try and knock the Stars out of the postseason for the first time in three attempts.
“Different emotionally for sure,” Avs forward Logan O’Connor said. “We are really happy with how (Saturday’s) game went. We were firing on all cylinders. Whereas last year, things were a little discombobulated throughout.”
After a season full of injuries and player availability issues, the Avs entered Monday night as the healthier team in this series. Ross Colton remained out with an undisclosed injury, but Gabe Landeskog’s comeback and remarkable level of play after 1,032 days away widened the gap with Dallas on the health front as Miro Heiskanen and Jason Robertson continued to be absent.
“We’re also just a different team,” Toews said. “Obviously, missing that game hurt for me, and not having Val was tough for the team as well. Just having pretty much a full roster right now is different, and we feel like we’re getting better as the series goes on.”
Further to Toews’ point, Avs coach Jared Bednar was quite positive about his team’s effort in Game 3 — a 2-1 overtime loss that left Colorado in a 2-1 series hole. That performance was better than Game 2, which was also an overtime loss.
Then came Game 4, which was the best offensive performance by any team in the first round of the 2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs. When the Avs play like that, particularly against an elite opponent like the Stars, it’s clear winning the Stanley Cup is the ceiling for this group.
“Everyone was feeling good, everyone had jump and we were all on the same page working towards the same direction,” Manson said of Game 4. “I think we can use that to see what really works, these are the tangible effects of when everybody sees that it wasn’t anything special. It’s like we should just do what we need to do now, not what we think we need to do, if that makes sense.”
To borrow an analogy from another sport, Colorado’s fastball is arguably the best in the NHL. It should be, given the remodeled Avs came into Monday night with a $100 million roster and a healthy, impactful Landeskog.
But, the Stars have been the best team in recent years at denying the Avs’ ability to play at their best, to reach back and find the best fastball out there. The Avs found what worked against the Winnipeg last year, and were relentless in bulldozing their way past the Jets.
Expecting the same against the Stars might be a stretch, but it’s possible the Avs have found what can help them finally get past their recent playoff nemesis.
“You’ve got to learn from what you’ve been doing throughout the course of the series,” Bednar said. “There’s things that we’ve liked. There’s things that we want to improve upon.
“I think there’s some things that we did in that game that are repeatable. I’m not going to go into specifics, but you have to learn, and just adapt and kind of take what the other team gives you. A lot of what we did in that game, and why we had success is because we were really highly competitive, and the attention to detail within our game in almost all areas of our game was good. So it’s got to continue.”
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