Avalanche goaltender Scott Wedgewood had a tremendous 2025-26 season. Entering the season as the team’s starter as Mackenzie Blackwood recovered from offseason surgery, Wedgewood got 14 of the first 16 games of the regular season to himself, with Trent Miner chipping in with two starts.
The Avalanche were unstoppable for the most part this season. The league’s Presidents’ trophy winner dominated the league, winning at least one game against every other team.
Wedgewood and Blackwood won the William M Jennings award, given to the goalie or goalies with the fewest goals scored against them.
Still, Wedgewood finished fifth in the NHL for the Vezina trophy. Andrei Vasilevskiy won it, while Jeremy Swayman and Ilya Sorokin were runner-ups.
Wedgewood also led the league in goals-against average (GAA) at 2.02. While there are players above him in that category, Wedgewood played the most games out of those players. The next-closest player in games played is Andrei Vasilevskiy, who played in 58 games (13 more than Wedgewood). Vasilevskiy finished the season with a goals-against average of 2.31.
If there was a year that an Avalanche goaltender would win the Vezina trophy, it would and should have been 2025-26. Wedgewood was outstanding. He faced a lot of tough situations while the team in front of him struggled at times.
He had 31 wins and four shutouts, too.
I’m happy that head coach Jared Bednar and the team believed in him for the majority of the season. He deserved a lot more, to be honest.
When the Avalanche weren’t able to score a bunch, Wedgewood was there to keep them in the game for the most part.
At the end of the day, a secondary award (that being… not a team award) isn’t what the Avalanche stand for. Their entire focus is to help win games. If and when either Blackwood or Wedgewood win the Vezina trophy, it would be incredible.
It could be difficult, though, as 2025-26 showed that it is sometimes smart to play both of your goaltenders throughout the 82-game season. Well, 84 games starting next season.
Wedgewood played 45 games to Blackwood’s 39. I think that if Wedgewood would have played maybe 8-10 more games, he would have been in the conversation.
Still, finishing fifth in the voting while leading in several of the key goaltender statistics is ridiculous. If Wedgewood follows up with an even better season in 2026-27 and the result is still the same, the NHL would officially have a voting problem.
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