The Colorado Avalanche now have five overtime losses to start the 2025-26 season. Saturday afternoon’s game against the Sharks was the most recent of the group. Starting goaltender Mackenzie Blackwood is finally back from his injury he had been dealing with, but he, alongside an offense that just couldn’t get the job done, fell to San Jose just 1:48 into the overtime period.
This was a game the Avalanche should have won, especially given the fast start they had. Martin Necas, who just signed an extension with the team, scored just 30 seconds into the game. That should always give the team a boost of confidence as they proceed into the game. San Jose was held without a shot on goal for the forst 7:57 of the game. Early on, it felt like Colorado had the upper hand. Macklin Celebrini scored a tying goal with 1:39 left in the first period.
Colorado led in shots on goal 38-23, and though that’s a good margin, it matters that the Avalanche were just unable to score more goals.
Both teams had 18 giveaways while Colorado had two takeaways and San Jose had six.
The Sharks are now 4-6-2 after their win against Colorado, while the Avalanche are 7-1-5. That last column, as you might know, is overtime losses. That’s a brutal way of losing games, though they still reward overtime losing teams a single point for getting to that extra period. The Avalanche have been snakebitten by turnovers this year and it continued.
The goal that former first overall pick Macklin Celebrini scored to tie the game at 1-1 was just a beautiful shot by the 19 year old. As former Avalanche and current broadcaster on Altitude TV John-Michael Liles said, it was a play that proved why he was a first overall pick. Pretty difficult to stop something like that.
The Colorado Avalanche need to find more consistency
One of the issues that everyone has noticed is that the Avalanche have a power play conversion percentage of 17%. You read that correctly. That ranks 23rd in the league. However, they are ranked fifth in penalty kill percentage at 88.9%.
The Avalanche just aren’t executing as consistently as a playoff contender should be. They lose a game in New Jersey against the Devils 4-3 and I took that as a tough loss to a great team, and then they come back two days later at home and win 8-4 against the same Devils team. Follow that with a 4-2 win at Vegas against the Golden Knights on Friday, and then lose an overtime game 3-2 to one of the weakest and youngest teams in the entire NHL.
The Avalanche are off for the next two days, and then head back to Denver to take on the Tampa Bay Lightning, who are 5-6. Hopefully Colorado figures out their flaws so that they can defeat a Lightning team that will play on Sunday afternoon.
The Avs should be well-rested for that game, and though the Lightning have Andrei Vasilevskiy at net, there should be hardly any excuses since the Avs should be a top team in the league. They just didn’t exactly play like it on Saturday.
If they cannot figure out how to win in regulation, they need to get it together in overtime and shootouts. What they are doing now is a bad recipe for a long season. It’s something that can deflate their season if they don’t figure it out fast.