There was an opportunity Wednesday morning for the Colorado Avalanche to celebrate a remarkable 2024-25 season.
Next up will be a chance to save it and avoid seeing this roller-coaster campaign end in another postseason disappointment.
Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar became the first teammates since Mario Lemieux and Jaromir Jagr in 2001 to be named finalists for the Ted Lindsay Award, which is given to the most outstanding player as voted on by the NHL Players’ Association. Now, the franchise with two of the three best players must try to avoid the same fate for the third straight season — losing an elimination game at Ball Arena — when the Dallas Stars arrive Thursday night for Game 6 with a 3-2 series lead.
“Our track record of responding, I feel like’s been pretty good over the course of the year,” Makar said. “We’ve been tested with a lot of different things, and so I think this is nothing new. To be able to have the response that we did in Game 4 was pretty good, so it’s just going to be another one like that tomorrow night.”
The Avs are at one of those proverbial forks in the road that could define the franchise for years to come. There is a recent Stanley Cup banner hanging from the rafters at Ball Arena and plenty of core players from that championship team remain.
There is leeway given after winning a title, but for how long is never certain. Their roommates at Ball Arena are one year less removed from a championship, but also just went through serious upheaval before the end of the regular season.
Colorado’s 2022-23 season ended with a 2-1 loss in Game 7 of a first-round series at home to Seattle. Last season, it was these Stars, with a 2-1 win in Game 6 of a second-round series, who eliminated the Avs in Denver.
Professional athletes spend far less time thinking about the big picture, but this city’s hockey fans would struggle with the idea of a third straight ending that feels so similar. This one, given some of the context, might sting even more than the previous two, even if the opponent would become the Stanley Cup favorite after surviving this showdown.
The focus would immediately turn to tough questions and a long, hard offseason.
“I’m not familiar with what’s happened here, but I mean elimination games are the same anywhere, no matter where you are,” Avs center Brock Nelson said. “Your backs are against the wall. You come out with everything you have. Desperation, intensity, details, everything — all that needs to be at the peak to keep it going. So we’re confident in here that we have that capability. We saw it in Game 4. It’s kind of that same mentality, that same game plan — to attack and roll them over. We need more of that and to learn from the last game.”
This series has taken two wild swings. Colorado crushed Dallas in Game 4, then the Stars’ stars responded with a resounding Game 5 victory. The core of this team has the championship DNA that clubs crave so desperately in trying times like this.
There’s also been a huge infusion of new players and personalities. Guys like Nelson, who don’t have a reason to feel any weight of recent postseason disappointments.
This group still believes it can win 14 more postseason games, but it can’t do that without winning the next two. And that means coming from behind at the end of a best-of-7 series to advance.
This core has rallied from a 1-0 deficit twice — in 2019 against Calgary and last season against Winnipeg. Both of those included winning the next four to cruise into the next round.
The Avs have to win an elimination game on home ice for the first time in three years to even get to the next barrier: winning a Game 7 as a group for the first time.
“You learn from all your experiences,” Avs coach Jared Bednar said. “We haven’t come back in a series in the recent past. This is a challenge for us, right?
“I’m confident in our team. I am. I want to see that hunger that we brought for Game 4. The motivation is there. I think the guys are confident. They believe in this team. It’s about going out and freeing yourself up to go play instinctual hockey and confident hockey, and not getting too wrapped up or too tense and it sort of freezes up your game. We did it for Game 4. I think we can do it again.”
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