The Colorado Avalanche host the Pittsburgh Penguins on Monday night in their first two meetings during the 2025-26 season. Both teams are at the top of close to the top in their respective divisions, with Colorado up by four points over the Dallas Stars for first place in the Central and Pittsburgh tied for second in the Metropolitan Division, though they are behind the Hurricanes by a large nine points.
Colorado is 3-2 in their last five games, most recently falling to the Jets 3-1 in Winnipeg on Saturday. In that particular game, the Avalanche didn’t necessarily play bad—they just struggled to get anything going offensively. That’s going to happen from time to time, even if you are the best team in the league. It was an afternoon game, so that doesn’t help, but it also isn’t an excuse. Every team in the league has to play at whatever time is on the schedule.
Many Avalanche players have had tremendous seasons this year, most notably Nathan MacKinnon. MacKinnon has 44 goals and 65 assists for 109 points. He’s in contention with Connor McDavid (114 points) for the Hart trophy and several others for the Rocket Richard trophy (leading goal-scorer). Among the players right behind MacKinnon in goal scoring are Cole Caufield (MTL), Kirill Kaprizov (MIN), and Matt Boldy (MIN).
One of the biggest things of note for the Avalanche this season is their special teams. They currently rank 29th on the power play at 16.1%, while they rank fifth on the penalty kill at 82.7%.
Nathan MacKinnon goes head-to-head with Sidney Crosby once again
MacKinnon and Crosby have faced each other 19 times since MacKinnon entered the league in 2013. He has eight goals and 17 assists in those games, while taking 69 shots. In comparison, Crosby has nine goals and seven assists in those games with 59 shots on goal.
On the power play this season, MacKinnon has nine goals and 16 assists, while Crosby has 10 goals and 10 assists on the power play. It’s also fair to point out that Crosby has missed 10 games due to injury this season. MacKinnon has missed just one game, which was immediately following the Winter Olympics, where both players played, though Crosby went down with an injury and missed the last several games of the tournament.
While this matchup is not against division opponents, it still has some weight to it, as the Avalanche want to keep ahead of the Stars and the Penguins want to try to catch up to the Hurricanes as best they can. It should be a tough battle for both teams, but that could mean either a low-scoring game or a high-scoring game. It could come down to which goalie stays hot the longest. Which goalie shows up?
With both teams having a great year, I predict something along the lines of a 5-4 win for the Avalanche.