What’s Standing Between the Avalanche and Another Stanley Cup?

The Avalanche’s top-end talent isn’t going anywhere. MacKinnon remains the engine of the offense, while Makar continues to be one of the most impactful defensemen in hockey. Martin Necas and Artturi Lehkonen give Colorado another pair of important offensive pieces.

The bigger question is what happens beyond them. Colorado moved on from Valeri Nichushkin and Ross Colton during the offseason, creating holes that can’t simply be ignored. While the Avalanche added Jaden Schwartz, Fedor Svechkov and Zachary L’Heureux, among others, those additions don’t automatically replace everything that left.

If the Avalanche are going to win four playoff series, they cannot rely on MacKinnon and Makar to carry the offense every night. They need contributions throughout the lineup, particularly when opponents inevitably find ways to slow down the stars.

Goaltending Can’t Become the Weak Link

Colorado also needs its goaltending to be good enough when the games matter most. The Avalanche have invested in Mackenzie Blackwood as their starter, and there is plenty to like about what he can bring to the position. But the standard changes in the playoffs.

Colorado doesn’t necessarily need a goaltender to steal every game. It does need one capable of making the timely save when the Avalanche aren’t at their best, and that became especially important against Vegas.

When a playoff series is decided by a handful of chances, one bad goal can completely change the momentum. Colorado needs to know it can trust its goaltending when the pressure rises.

The Defense Has to Stay Healthy

On paper, Colorado’s defense remains one of the team’s biggest strengths. Makar leads the group, while Devon Toews, Brent Burns and Brett Kulak give the Avalanche an impressive collection of experience and puck-moving ability. Sam Malinski is also coming off a career-best season and should have an opportunity to take another step.

However, depth matters. The Avalanche are built to lean heavily on their top defensemen, and that can become dangerous over an 84-game season followed by four rounds of playoff hockey.

Colorado needs its blue line healthy when April arrives. If it can get through the regular season without overextending its top players and enter the playoffs with a healthy defensive corps, it will be in a much better position to handle the physical demands of another postseason run.

Colorado Has to Prove the Vegas Series Was an Outlier

The biggest obstacle isn’t necessarily a specific player or position; it's more about figuring out exactly what went wrong against the Vegas Golden Knights.

The Avalanche finished the regular season with 121 points and won the Presidents’ Trophy. They were one of the NHL’s best teams from start to finish before they were swept.

That doesn’t erase everything Colorado accomplished during the regular season, but it does create a question the team will have to answer in 2026-27: Was that series simply a bad matchup and a bad stretch at the worst possible time, or did Vegas expose something that other playoff teams can exploit?

The Avalanche don’t have to prove they can dominate the regular season again, they just need to prove that their dominance is able to consistently translate into playoff success.

The Avalanche Still Have What It Takes

There is no reason to believe Colorado isn’t a Stanley Cup contender entering the 2026-27 season. The core is too talented, the organization is too well-built and the roster still has too many elite players for anything else to be the expectation.

Just being a contender and actually winning the Stanley Cup are two very different things, though.

The Avalanche need their secondary scoring to emerge, their goaltending to hold up, their defense to remain healthy, and their stars to be at their best when the margin for error disappears. If those pieces fall into place, Colorado has enough talent to make another deep run.

The biggest thing standing between the Avalanche and another Stanley Cup may simply be whether they can make sure last year’s disappointing ending doesn’t happen again.