Colorado’s season is on the brink after the Avalanche lost three straight games to the Vegas Golden Knights in the Western Conference Final and fell into a 3-0 series deficit. Game 4 looms next, and for a team that spent more than six months setting the pace in the NHL, the turnaround has been brutal.
Jared Bednar said the team knew it was going to be a battle, and it has looked that way from the opening whistle. Through the first three games, the goaltending edge has leaned toward Vegas: Carter Hart has posted a goals saved above expected mark of plus-3.0 in the series, while Scott Wedgewood’s number sits at minus-1.66. For Colorado as a whole in the playoffs, goals saved above expected is only 0.1, a flat line for a club that usually needs more from its netminding to survive a tight series.
The Avalanche have no recent precedent to lean on, but they do have history on their side in a narrow sense. Only four teams in NHL history have erased a 3-0 series deficit to win a series, and only two of those rallies have come in the past 50 years. That is the mountain Colorado now faces after Sunday night’s loss in Las Vegas.
The injuries may be the heavier weight. Nathan MacKinnon and Valeri Nichushkin were hurt in Game 3, and Bednar had no update on either player the day before Game 4. Cale Makar is also playing through injury, leaving Colorado short of the kind of clean health it needed to push back after dropping the first three games.
Bednar said that at this point in the year, and at this point in the series, the Avalanche have usually found a way to make one more play than the other team to win. Three games in a row, he said, the other side has made that play instead. He was blunt that it does not shock him, even if it does surprise him a little that Colorado has not found a way through yet. Maybe, he said, the next three games will go differently. For the Avalanche, that is the only path left.
