It goes without saying that the finish to the Colorado Avalanche’s 2025-26 postseason run was disappointing. They won the Presidents’ trophy as the team with the most wins in the regular season, and were cruising through the postseason until they hit the Vegas Golden Knights, who they lost four-straight to.
The list of things that went wrong during the regular season is very short. Sometimes, you could point fingers at defensive breakdowns. Sometimes, the goaltending wasn’t up to its potential. But the biggest one of them all is their power play.
The Avalanche finished with a power play conversion rate of 17.1%. That ranked 27th in the entire league. Now, while that wasn’t the worst special teams unit in the entire league over the 82 game season, it was around the 29th-32nd spot for a good chunk of the season. In fact, we really didn’t see much improvement until after the Olympic break.
Despite those struggles, general manager Joe Sakic said that “the entire coaching staff” will be back. There had been speculation about a potential culture change that would have head coach Jared Bednar moving on. There was only a small part of me that fed into that idea. In the end, it didn’t, and won’t, happen.
Even more speculation was around the idea of the Avalanche moving on from assistant coach Dave Hakstol, who took over as the team’s special teams coach this season after the firing of Ray Bennett in May of 2025. What saved him is the improvement his power play unit showed late in the year.
Moving on from coach to coach is never easy for players. It’s tough to learn and to buy into different philosophies, especially if change is frequent. Continuity is what will help the Avalanche thrive going forward. Everybody, including players and coaches, know that the power play units were not good enough this year. They will continue to work at that area of their game, and hopefully we will see a lot of progress in 2026-27. If not, Hakstol might not be as fortunate following the upcoming season.
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