The Colorado Avalanche had an unfortunate ending to their 2025-26 season, as they fell to the Vegas Golden Knights in the Stanley Cup playoffs. Still, it is a new season and everybody will be back to 0-0-0. The bad taste of the Vegas series will remain, but the Avalanche control their own destiny going forward. It’s up to them to put that to bed and move on.
Unsurprisingly, the Carolina Hurricanes will be atop many power rankings, with the Avalanche not far behind. However, Colorado has a good chance of passing the Stanley Cup champs if they start out fast.
Despite going through a tough stretch and losing games 7-10, the Avalanche started out strong. They went 14-6 and held onto the top spot in the standings for most, if not all, of the season. They finished eight points ahead of second place (121 points) with Carolina in second and the division rival Dallas Stars (112) in third place.
Depth remains a key piece to the Colorado Avalanche’s 2026-27 puzzle
Colorado did lose Valeri Nichushkin when they traded him to the Columbus Blue Jackets, but are hoping that their depth and signings can make up for that departure. They added Jaden Schwartz into the mix and hope that he can put up similar numbers to Nichushkin. Schwartz was signed to a three-year deal, so the hope is obviously that they want him to be around long-term.
Then, you have players such as Nathan MacKinnon, Martin Necas, and Gabriel Landeskog at or near the top of the roster. Those three players are more than likely going to put up great numbers throughout the year.
We would all love to see Landeskog have a healthy year. Unfortunately, he missed 22 regular season games last year, the first regular season action he saw since his knee injury in 2021-22. He had 14 goals and 21 assists last year and I would love to see him put up even better numbers. With a healthy season, that is more than reasonable.
Colorado faces the Hurricanes on December 18 and February 9 this season. The first game is in Denver, while the second one is in the Hurricanes’ own arena. Enforcing dominance against their inter-conference foe could be a key to the Avalanche making it known that they own the NHL, not the Hurricanes.
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