COLUMBUS — If the Colorado Avalanche is going to claim another Central Division title or even the top seed in the Western Conference, it will have to happen the hard way.
A pair of losses to bottom-feeding teams in the past week has left the Avs three points back of the Dallas Stars with seven games to play. That’s daunting enough, but Colorado has toughest-remaining schedule in the league, per Tankathon.
The seven remaining opponents have combined for a .617 points percentage this season. Dallas’ remaining schedule is the 16th-toughest. So what does Avs coach Jared Bednar think about going after the division title?
“The same I’ve been for the past two months,” Bednar said. “We’ll chase it, but we’re not going to kill our guys to get it.”
Colorado has five games against playoff teams, plus a pair of games against Minnesota. The Wild are technically still alive for a playoff berth, but are eight points back of the final spot in the West and have a one percent chance of making it, according to a predictive model from The Athletic’s Dom Luszczyszyn.
That same model gives the Avs a 10% chance of winning the division, a 75% chance of finishing second and a 14% chance of ending up in third behind the Winnipeg Jets. It’s not a given yet, but Avalanche fans who want to see their team play on the road in the opening round of the 2024 Stanley Cup Playoffs should probably be thinking about where they want to stay and eat in Southern Manitoba.
While catching the Stars for the division title could prove to be just out of reach, there are other teams in the standings to monitor as well. If the Avs are to make a deep run, finishing ahead of the Vancouver Canucks or Edmonton Oilers in the league standings could be useful in a potential Western Conference Final matchup.
Luszczyszyn’s model projects the Avs to finish with 108 points, one behind the Canucks and one in front of the Oilers. Colorado plays Edmonton twice in the final seven contests, including Game 82 at Ball Arena — a day that could have implications in both the standings and at the top of the NHL scoring race.
Nathan MacKinnon has 127 points with seven games to play, while Oilers star Connor McDavid is one behind with two games in hand. Tampa Bay’s Nikita Kucherov is also at 127 with one more game than MacKinnon to play.
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All of the standings machinations are fun for fans to banter about, but the players aren’t going to care much about that. While it was a big deal a year ago for the Avs to rally at the end and claim a division title the veterans are quite proud of, they have their sights set on bigger goals.
Even with seven games to play, the process remains ahead of the results … for now.
“We just want to feel good about our game,” Avs forward Andrew Cogliano said. “At the end of the day, it’s about finding our level of defensive play but also finding that rhythm offensively where we’re creating chances, we’re getting shots and we’re hemming teams in. We just need to feel good about ourselves.
“That’s not exactly what we wanted (Monday) night (in a loss at Columbus). We’ve got to find what we were doing at times against Nashville and against New York. That’s the recipe we need.”
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