The Colorado Avalanche hold a 3-1 series lead over the Minnesota Wild in the Stanley Cup playoffs. They have a chance to put the Wild away for the postseason with a win Wednesday night.
With the game at Ball Arena, it has brought up an interesting statistic for the club. The Avalanche haven’t clinched a series with a win at home since… 2008.
That isn’t a typo. The coincidence is that the team the Avs beat in that 2008 series was, yes, the Minnesota Wild.
On that 2007-08 team, the Avalanche boasted some extreme talent in Joe Sakic (Hall of Fame), Peter Forsberg, Milan Hejduk, and Adam Foote (among others).
Hejduk led the way in goals that season with 29, while Paul Stastny was the team leader in assists with 47. Jose Theodore led the way in net for the most part, racking up over 3,000 minutes that season over 53 games played. Peter Budaj had 35 starts while Tyler Weiman had one.
Both Budaj and Theodore had save percentages over .900.
The postseason series against the Wild that year saw the Avs prevail 4-2. In Game 1, Kurt Sauer and Ryan Smyth put up the two regulation goals for the Avs, while Mikko Koivu and Todd Fedoruk scored for the Wild and the game went into overtime with Sakic scoring 11:11 into the period.
The Avalanche would go on to lose twice in a row to the Wild, both in overtime, and putting them in a 1-2 hole.
However, it was the next three games that helped Colorado send the Wild home, as they won all three of the following games by a combined score of 10-4.
One of the cool things about the postseason for the Avs back then is that, at home (The Pepsi Center), all of their games were sellouts. The Pepsi Center held 18,007 seats, with all of them filled, in each of those games.
That is true dedication.
This year’s Avalanche team has looked dominant at times—more times than not. They won the Presidents’ trophy, given to the team who finished the regular season with the most wins, swept the Los Angeles Kings in the first playoff series, and can put the Wild away in Game 5.
The team’s goaltending has been solid, minus a game in which they (still) won after giving up six goals (they scored nine), and a 5-1 loss to the Wild. Other than those two games, it’s hard to complain about the guys in net.
While that 2007-08 team had some stars, this year’s team does as well. They’re looking to flip history Wednesday night and finish the series off at home for the first time since that year.
With a combination of toughness, grit, and superb players and coaches, the Colorado Avalanche can go far. They just need to take it game by game, which is obvious that that’s what they’re doing, given head coach Jared Bednar’s postgame interviews, where he mentions how games are different from another.
One of the few constants between that 2007-08 team and this 2025-26 team is that they both had heart.
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