The Avalanche owe you one after 2023 Stanley Cup whiff
From the tailored suits that make the rest of us Colorado dudes look like bums, to the class of longtime captain Gabriel Landeskog, the Avalanche are a model of professionalism.
Except last season.
Why did the betting favorite to win the Stanley Cup flame out to the Seattle Kraken in the first round of the playoffs? When a $49 million star forward is extracted from a Seattle hotel and removed from a playoff series, it’s fair to question a team's commitment to excellence.
Avs fans deserve better than the franchise gave them during the 2023 Stanley Cup playoffs.
Colorado’s rebuttal begins with the season opener Wednesday against the Los Angeles Kings.
As coach Jared Bednar said: “We should be a hungry group this year.”
With at least six new players being integrated into the lineup, don’t expect a well-oiled start.
“I don’t think it will be perfect right off the bat,” defenseman Bo Byram told me on Monday.
But Colorado fans should expect a more professional operation from start to finish. Whether it was the annual contenders of the 1990s or the champs of 2022, that’s been the standard for the Avalanche. Even if the talent wasn’t good enough, you usually got their best.
But there should be no spin on Valeri Nichushkin’s mysterious exit from the playoffs five months ago. The Avs let down the same fans who pack Ball Arena on a nightly basis.
Colorado banked on Alex Newhook holding down the second line when the 21-year-old wasn’t close to being ready. The Avs wasted valuable salary cap space by playing a game of wait-and-see with Landeskog’s knee injury. Stars Nathan MacKinnon, Mikko Rantanen and Cale Makar weren’t surrounded by enough talent to support a repeat bid for the Stanley Cup. The Avs whiffed.
And athletes always know the score.
“I just don’t think we had the team to win last year. When you’re in it, you always believe,” MacKinnon said.
And the Avs earning an early exit from the playoffs suggests they knew well they weren’t good enough to make another run to the finals.
“Never really got into a rhythm because of all our injuries and stuff,” Makar said.
Monday afternoon at Ball Arena, the Avs (2022 NHL champs) worked out on the ice, while the Nuggets (2023 NBA champs) took the upstairs practice court. The Avs should notify their roommates, the Nuggets: It ain’t easy being king. The ’23 Avalanche were a sucker bet.
“I think the short summer leading up to (the next season) is really tough. I think that showed in November when guys started falling out of the lineup with injuries,” Byram said Monday. “It’s not easy. It’s a long year. When you go that deep into the playoffs and only get a month and a half off and turn around, it makes it difficult. I really have a lot of respect for those teams that have gone back-to-back.”
As the Avs found out the hard way, going back-to-back is one serious labor of love. We are 23 years in, and only two teams this century have pulled off the feat: the Tampa Bay Lightning (2020 and '21) and Pittsburgh Penguins (2016 and '17). But four more teams won multiple titles in a short span, from the Blackhawks (with three titles) to the Kings and Devils and Red Wings.
The Avs' core remains intact. And there’s a sense general manager Chris MacFarland filled the correct voids by adding six new players, notably forwards Ross Colton and Jonathan Drouin.
And MacKinnon enters his lone season as the NHL’s highest-paid player at $12.6 million.
Denver diehards know the feeling when their guys are the best in the business and the Lakers or Golden Knights won’t stand in the way of a parade. It was that way in 2022 for the Avs and in 2023 for the Nuggets. Both teams blasted to a title with dominant 16-4 postseason records.
“I think we’re all kind of motivated this year to kind of get our standard back to where we need it to win. You have to be pretty near perfect to get the job done,” MacKinnon said.
Catching a hot Kraken squad in the playoffs wasn’t the worst part for the Avs. The worst part was hurting the hearts of Avs diehards with a lack of professionalism. They owe you one.
(Contact Gazette sports columnist Paul Klee at [email protected] or on Twitter at @bypaulklee.)
