The Champs On The Brink

Colorado's season from hell could reach its fitting conclusion tonight.

Nothing has really gone right for the Colorado Avalanche ever since they lifted the Stanley Cup last June. Almost immediately, free agency saw them part ways with Nazem Kadri and Andre Burakovsky, who scored a combined 10 goals and 23 points during the Avs’ playoff run, as well as goalie Darcy Kuemper, who was up-and-down in the postseason but ranked among the league’s best regular-season netminders. Then the 2022-23 regular season came, and the Avalanche suffered a spate of injuries that affected nearly all of their stars, causing them the use the fifth-most players (43) of any NHL team. Things seemed so cursed for Colorado that, at one point, it was up in the air whether they would make the playoffs at all.

The Avs did eventually turn their record around, posting the league’s second-most wins in the second half of the regular season. Nathan MacKinnon, Mikko Rantanen, Cale Makar and Devon Toews ended up with strong numbers, and Kuemper’s replacement — ex-Rangers backup Alexandar Georgiev — was one of the unsung heroes of the season in net. But now, all of that recovery effort is in danger of being for naught. In order to keep defending their championship, Colorado must win two straight games against a Seattle Kraken team that seemed dangerous from the start, or else the Avs will join an exclusive club of champs who fell flat.

Colorado should have known Seattle was not to be taken lightly. After a disappointing expansion season (to us stathead types, at least), the Kraken were finally released in Year 2, ranking 10th in goal differential and fifth in close-score Corsi at 5-on-5. While they didn’t boast a ton of star power — at least not yet, as Matty Beniers could develop into an elite player someday very soon — Seattle had a ton of depth (18 players recorded at least 5.0 Goals Above Replacement) and would pose a real postseason threat if they could just get their goaltending situation (No. 30 in regular-season GAR) straightened out.

In the playoffs, all of those factors have come together to give the Avalanche fits. Goalie Philipp Grubauer, whom Colorado chose not to re-sign in the summer of 2021 despite being named a Vezina Trophy finalist, is getting his revenge with a .918 save percentage and +2.1 goals saved above average, fifth among netminders this postseason. On the offensive side, 13 different Kraken skaters have combined for 15 goals in the series so far, with heroes frequently emerging from unexpected places — perhaps none moreso than 21-year-old rookie Tye Kartye, who scored his first career goal in his first career game to break a 1-1 tie in Game 5.

While the Kraken have only outscored Colorado by a single goal in the series, 15-14, Seattle has largely controlled the flow of play against the champs. According to Natural Stat Trick, Seattle has accrued 58.8% of the goals in the series at 5-on-5 with the score close, to go with 54.4% of the shots, 55.1% of the high-danger scoring chances and 50.9% of the expected goals. This is not a case of an underdog getting lucky against a heavy favorite; the Avs have gotten everything they bargained for and more from Seattle.

And if Colorado doesn’t pull off the comeback, they would become one of just 16 champions since 1968 who failed to make it out of the first round in the following postseason. (Not counting the four defending champs who missed the playoffs entirely.) Furthermore, if they lose tonight, the Avalanche would tie for the fourth-fewest playoff wins in a Stanley Cup follow-up bid:

With Makar returning from suspension for Game 6, part of me still wants to say the Avalanche are just too talented to go out of the playoffs like this. But at the same time, with two elimination games coming up (the first of which is on the road), they’ve left things up to chance and the Hockey Gods now — a fate no team wants to find its title defense resting upon.