The Colorado Avalanche and their fans don’t have to wait any longer nor do they need help from other teams to clinch a playoff spot for the 2024-25 postseason. The team defeated the Columbus Blue Jackets on Thursday by a final score of 7-3, securing their spot in the tournament.
This marks the seventh-consecutive year that head coach Jared Bednar led the team to the postseason. The only year in which he failed to do so was in 2016-17, his first year on the job.
Honestly, it would have been extremely surprising if the Avalanche didn’t make the postseason this year, especially after acquiring Mackenzie Blackwood from the San Jose Sharks and Scott Wedgewood from the Nashville Predators. Those two goalies, for the most part, have been outstanding. Their additions really have seemed to have helped the team’s skaters play better and be more confident for the most part.
We’ve talked about depth scoring and how the Avalanche have lacked it more than anything. That was not the case on Thursday night, with Charlie Coyle, Parker Kelly, and Brock Nelson each scoring on Columbus. It also ended up being Coyle’s first goal in an Avalanche sweater, which is really cool for him.
The Avalanche are likely going to face the Dallas Stars in the first round of the playoffs this year, and off course, that will include facing their old pal Mikko Rantanen. It won’t surprise me if Rantanen feels extra fire in his soul to play a huge part for Dallas in that series; A form of revenge if you will. Though it’s been several months, I’m sure that the trade to the Hurricanes is still in the back of his mind.
Cale Makar also contributed to a goal, which put him in amazing company being just the 18th defenseman in NHL history to score 30 goals in a season—the first to do it since Mike Green in 2008-09. I’m curious to see how many more goals Makar can have on his stat sheet for the year. Of course, that’s not really the mindset of the Avalanche, though. The thing that matters most to the team is winning. It doesn’t matter how, just win games. The rest will take care of itself.
Congratulations to the Avalanche on another playoff berth. It didn’t look very promising early in the year, but the team has played out of their minds a lot of the time. You just love to see it!