The Colorado Avalanche should have plenty of confidence as they lead the Western Conference (and the entire NHL) with 73 points on the season. They have a 12-point advantage on the next-best teams (the Dallas Stars and Minnesota Wild, who both have 61).
They are flying high. Some would say Cloud 9. With that many points at hand, they an afford a loss here and there, but nobody should be thinking about a loss for their team. Somebody should probably tell that to the St. Louis Blues, though.
On a recent episode of Overdrive with Darren Dreger and Pierre Lebrun, LeBrun noted that Blues’ president of hockey operations and general manager Doug Armstrong let it slip to other teams that he has no confidence if the Blues have to face the Avalanche in the first round of the 2025-26 Stanley Cup playoffs.
"Right, and I think that Doug Armstrong has told other teams that about the Blues right now, that even when the Blues recently had their push, and I think they were only a point or two out of the last wild card spot in the West, which by the way, the last wild card spot in the West seems like whoever wants this is gonna back in, but I've been told by other teams that he has said, I don't care if we make the playoffs or not, we're not beating Colorado in the first round, so I'm still listening at all these guys."Doug Armstrong
I mean, this doesn’t really come as a surprise given how much of a tear the Avalanche are on this season. They are the gold standard of what any team wants to be at this point into a season. While they have lost a couple of games now, they are almost three months removed from their only three-game losing streak.
They also entered January on a high note, with a nine-game win streak in December and won their first game in January, making it a 10-game win streak. They did lose their next two games (against Tampa Bay and Florida) in the East, but I think that they can definitely afford a couple of losses, especially when they aren’t against Western teams.
If you’re an Avalanche fan, you’re not sweating anything. It appears, however, that other teams are extremely nervous to square off against the best team in the league and that’s exactly the position the Avalanche want to see their foes in.
An interesting thing to pay attention to in the coming games is how the Avalanche play without two key pieces in Gabriel Landeskog and Devon Toews. Some figured that the absence of both of those players would be tough, and yes, they have been. But learning to play well without your captain and your second top-pair defenseman will only make the team better. Like I mentioned a couple of days ago, the Avalanche are playing with adversity.
Their absences have given other guys an opportunity to step up and chip in. In their recent win against the Columbus Blue Jackets, three players chipped in with a total of four goals: Defenseman Brent Burns (two), Ilya Solovyov, and Victor Olofsson (one each). That’s exactly what we want to see heading into the next stretch of the season. It’s what the Avalanche must see.
Depth scoring is a crucial part of an NHL team, and if the Avalanche get going on a big streak with that happening, they have zero worries going into the Stanley Cup playoffs.