The last time the Colorado Avalanche and Vegas Golden Knights met in the playoffs, the result left Avs star Nathan MacKinnon contemplating the unsatisfying sum of his career to that point.
“I’m going into my ninth year and I haven’t won sh--,” MacKinnon said in 2021, when — after winning the first two games of a second-round series — Colorado lost four straight contests to Vegas.
The next spring, MacKinnon and the Avs finally broke through by winning the 2022 Stanley Cup. One year later, it was Vegas’ turn to summit the mountain.
Now, both clubs arrive in the 2026 Western Conference Final looking to brush away fresh piles of frustration that have accumulated since their championship seasons. Neither Vegas nor Colorado has been this deep in the dance since winning it all three and four years ago, respectively.
There’s a new feel to the Golden Knights, who are being led by a coach — in John Tortorella — who was hired with eight games left in the season and a superstar player — in Mitch Marner — in his first year with the club and the first conference final of his 10-year career.
Colorado, meanwhile, kind of put the band back together when it re-acquired Nazem Kadri from the Calgary Flames at the trade deadline. While this team obviously features several different players at important positions than the one that claimed the 2022 Cup, it does feel as though the Avs have recaptured some of that championship magic by having Kadri and captain Gabriel Landeskog both back in a post-season lineup together after the former spent several seasons in Calgary and the latter was sidelined for years by a knee injury.
The Avalanche are attempting to become the first Presidents’ Trophy winner from a full 82-game campaign to make the Stanley Cup Final since the Vancouver Canucks did it 2011, while Vegas — which underperformed for much of the season and was still no lock to make the playoffs when it replaced Bruce Cassidy with Tortorella at the end of March — is hoping its perfectly timed surge continues.
Two long-standing Western Conference powers are about to lock horns with a berth in the final on the line.
Head-to-head records
Colorado: 2-0-1
Vegas: 1-1-1
Playoff Team Stats
Avalanche’s key playoff moment
We may have just witnessed it on Wednesday night. After carrying a 3-1 series lead over the Minnesota Wild home to Denver, the Avs fell behind the Wild 3-0 in the first period of Game 5. At that point, a Game 6 — and maybe even a Game 7 — felt inevitable for Colorado.
But the Avs swapped goalie Scott Wedgewood in for starter Mackenzie Blackwood, got a second-period strike to pull them within two, then delivered a memorable final five minutes that saw Jack Drury cut the lead to one before, who else, Nathan MacKinnon found the equalizer with less than 90 seconds to go.
Brett Kulak made sure the regulation-time comeback was more than a footnote by scoring the overtime winner 3:52 into the fourth frame.
While it was obviously a galvanizing and inspiring victory, the real gain for Colorado is the tangible fact that by dispatching the Wild in five games as opposed to six or seven, Colorado made it through the first two rounds playing a total of nine contests.
Good as the Avs are, nobody expected them to arrive in the West final via the deadly Central Division without getting through a gruelling series first. As it turns out, Colorado made the semifinal with an 8-1 record after sweeping the L.A. Kings in Round 1 and making much shorter work of Minnesota than it seemed it would early in Game 5.
Golden Knights’ key moment
The Knights were on the verge of falling behind the Utah Mammoth 3-1 in their first-round series, with the Mammoth holding a 4-3 lead on home ice halfway through the third period of Game 4. However, Brett Howden — more on him later — tied the game by tipping home a puck right in front of goalie Karel Vejmelka and Shea Theodore got the game-winner with 52 seconds left on the clock in the first OT stanza.
As it turned out, that was the first of consecutive 5-4 extra-time victories for Vegas, as it wrested control of the series back from Utah and closed out the set with three straight wins for a six-game triumph.
Six games versus Anaheim later, and Vegas is in the final four.
Colorado will win if…the power play keeps humming
Despite their overall success and all-world talent, the Avalanche only produced the 27th-best — or, put another way, sixth-worst — power play in the league during the regular season. The struggle continued at the outset of the playoffs, with Colorado failing to score a PPG in its first three games versus the Kings and finishing that series just 1-for-11 with the man advantage.
Then something clicked.
The Avs went 5-for-13 on the power play versus Minnesota, scoring a PPG in every game of the series except the final one.
MacKinnon, in particular, has caught fire on the man advantage, notching two goals and four points on the PP against the Wild. Kadri and Landeskog also kicked in three power-play points apiece as the top unit has caught fire in Colorado.
If a special-teams unit that was a deficiency for so long for the Avs suddenly becomes a consistent strength, Colorado will be tough to stop.
Vegas will win if…Tomas Hertl has awoken and Mark Stone returns
Hertl endured a brutal stretch of 29 straight games without a goal before finding the net late in Vegas’ Game 4 loss to Anaheim. The big Czech scored again next time out and closed Round 2 with four points in the final three contests. It would be a massive boon to the Vegas attack if Hertl could kickstart some offence further down in the lineup.
Also, Stone left Game 3 versus Anaheim with a lower-body injury and Vegas is just a much different team with its captain in the lineup. Recall, this is a player who scored 73 points in just 60 games this year and had seven more in the nine post-season outings he played. And, of course, it’s about so much more than the offence with Stone, who does everything right in all three zones.
We’ll see if having nearly a week off between series helps Stone get back in the lineup.
Colorado’s unsung hero
This will seem like recency bias because he just played the role of OT hero, but Brett Kulak has really been a steady influence for the Avs. The guy who went to two straight Cup finals with the Edmonton Oilers is back in the West final for a third straight year averaging 21:29 of ice per game in the playoffs, more than every other Colorado skater save Cale Makar and Devon Toews.
Overall, Kulak — picked up from Pittsburgh after Edmonton discarded him in the ill-fated Tristan Jarry trade — has five points in nine post-season contests while going plus-3 for the Avs.
Vegas’s unsung hero
Hello, Brett Howden. The guy who had 12 goals all season already has eight in the playoffs — four in Round 1, four more in Round 2 — including a strike in the series-clinching Game 6 win over Anaheim.
Howden is actually part of a newly constructed second line that has one Conn Smythe favourite, Mitch Marner, and another unsung hero in William Karlsson. “Wild Bill” didn’t play for six months before returning for Game 1 of the series against Anaheim. He picked up three assists versus the Ducks, but most importantly, his stabilizing presence at centre freed Marner to flip back to the flank, where he’s basically played his entire NHL career. Now, Karlsson between Marner and Howden is a dependably deadly unit for Vegas.
Series Schedule
* all games available on Sportsnet and Sportsnet+.
Game 1: Vegas at Colorado, Wed. May 20 at 8 p.m. ET / 5 p.m. PT
Game 2: Vegas at Colorado, Fri. May 22 at 8 p.m. ET / 5 p.m. PT
Game 3: Colorado at Vegas, Sun. May 24 at 8 p.m. ET / 5 p.m. PT
Game 4: Colorado at Vegas, Tues. May 26 at 9 p.m. ET / 6 p.m. PT
*Game 5: Vegas at Colorado, Thurs. May 28 at 8 p.m. ET / 5 p.m. PT
*Game 6: Colorado at Vegas, Sat. May 30 at 8 p.m. ET / 5 p.m. PT
*Game 7: Vegas at Colorado, Mon. June 1 at 8 p.m. ET/ 5 p.m. PT
