The Colorado Avalanche fell to the St. Louis Blues on Sunday night by a final score of 3-2. The Blues scored the game-winning goal with just 2:50 remaining in the third period, but at that point, Colorado was down a man as Gabriel Landeskog had to go off for “slashing.”
That call was pretty ridiculous, as the Blues player’s stick appeared to already be breaking before Landeskog’s made contact.
The loss was the team’s second in three games—the first being against the last-place Vancouver Canucks this past Wednesday.
At this point, can the postseason just get here, please? Valeri Nichushkin was held out with an upper-body injury, which didn’t help the matter, but the Avalanche just couldn’t get enough pucks into the net, and it’s as simple as that.
Nichushkin is a possibility for Tuesday.
Parker Kelly and Brock Nelson were the goal scorers for the Avalanche. It was Kelly’s 20th goal of the season, which, if you’ve been paying attention on X, was the mark that he had to get to in order for Avalanche reporter Meghan Angley to name a whale. You heard (read?) that right. How fun?
Waffles coming soon to Avs nation in honor of Parker Kelly hitting 20 goals... I haven't abandoned opening things up to name a whale, but I told @jessemontano_ we needed to have whale right now. pic.twitter.com/V3HVvLBlnd
— Meghan Angley (@megangley) April 6, 2026
Kelly’s emergence has been fun to watch. Last season, he tied his career-high for goals with eight, which he accomplished the year before, with the Ottawa Senators. This year has been much better, as he was able to reach more than double that figure in four less games!
The Avalanche were unfortunately unable to secure the division and conference titles on Sunday night, something that would have happened had they won vs the Blues. That’s just the way it goes sometimes, but they are making things hard for themselves.
There are still eight games left in the regular season and clinching the division and conference titles is not out of the question by any means. They just have to get back to playing their game how they want to play, and that requires getting an early lead on their opponents.
They play the Blues again on Tuesday, but this time, it will be in St. Louis. Similarly, six games ago, the Avalanche faced the Winnipeg Jets in Winnipeg. They pulled off a 3-2 win. However, their very next game was also against the Jets, but in Denver, and they lost.
Perhaps the team could look at those outcomes and figure something out. But losing against two teams that are near the bottom of the Central Division is not a good look after being so dominant for most of the year.
The Avs could have had things wrapped up already, but now that they aren’t yet, they have a chance to show the world that they can win the Stanley Cup in some pretty tough circumstances. Sure, they have clinched a playoff spot, but they should have clinched more at this point.
They’ve got to figure some stuff out. It’s not time to panic, but the Avalanche are better than this.