The Avalanche Are the Best Team in Hockey. Now They Have to Prove It in May.

At +260, the Colorado Avalanche are the clearest favorites to win the Stanley Cup that this league has seen in years. The sportsbooks don’t lie. The team sitting first overall in the NHL at 42-10-9 for 93 points, with a goal differential of +82, doesn’t lie either. This is the best hockey team on the planet right now.

But here’s the thing about being the best team in hockey: you still have to win four rounds in May and June. And for as dominant as the Avalanche have been all season, their recent playoff history is a flashing yellow light that nobody should ignore.

What Makes This Team Different

Start with Nathan MacKinnon. He is having one of the great individual seasons in recent NHL history, sitting at 100 points with 41 goals in 61 games, leading the league in even-strength goals and even-strength points. His plus-minus of +57 is best among all forwards in the league. He leads in average ice time at 22:15 per game. The Hart Trophy conversation isn’t a conversation — it’s a coronation waiting to happen.

Then there’s Cale Makar, who is doing what Cale Makar does: redefining what a defenseman can be. He’s third in scoring among all defensemen with 71 points, averaging nearly 25 minutes a night, and continues to make the case that he’s the best player at his position since Bobby Orr changed the template. His Norris Trophy odds are similarly decisive.

Behind those two, the Avalanche have depth that matches the firepower up top. Gabriel Landeskog is back and healthy. Valeri Nichushkin, a factor in the 2022 Cup run before his troubles derailed subsequent seasons, has been reintegrated into the lineup. Martin Necas was acquired at the trade deadline last offseason and has been exactly what they needed — a legitimate second-line center who takes pressure off MacKinnon.

And then, on March 6th, they went out and did it again.

The Kadri Move

Bringing Nazem Kadri back from Calgary was the kind of move that changes a Cup race. The Flames traded him for Victor Olofsson, a 2028 conditional first-round pick, and a 2027 conditional second — with Calgary retaining 20 percent of his $7 million AAV. Colorado gave up meaningful assets. They didn’t care.

Kadri had 41 points in 61 games for an underwhelming Flames team. More importantly, he won the Cup with this group in 2022 — he knows the system, he knows the culture, and his playoff résumé (44 points in 52 career playoff games) speaks for itself. His overtime goal against Edmonton in the 2022 conference finals is still one of the great clutch moments of this decade.

The Avalanche’s one persistent weakness this season has been the power play, which ranked dead last in the NHL at 15.5 percent. Kadri’s playmaking at the half-wall directly addresses that. Head Coach Jared Bednar has already sketched out a line combination that puts Kadri centering a third line of Lehkonen and Roy, with the flexibility to slide pieces around depending on matchups. That’s genuine depth at center — something the Avalanche never quite had after Kadri left for free agency in 2022.

Three Years of Frustration

None of this erases the record since they won it all. And the record is worth sitting with.

2023: Lost in seven games to the Seattle Kraken in the first round. A depleted roster without Landeskog or Nichushkin, combined with an inspired performance from former Av Philipp Grubauer, sent them home early.

2024: First-round win over Winnipeg, then a second-round exit to the Dallas Stars in six games. They averaged 2.5 goals per game against Dallas after putting up 5.5 in round one. Special teams collapsed entirely — 0-for-8 on the power play across a three-game stretch.

2025: First-round exit to the Stars again, in seven games this time. Colorado led 2-0 in the third period of Game 7 before Mikko Rantanen — the same player they had traded to Carolina months earlier, who then got flipped to Dallas at the deadline — scored a third-period hat trick to send them home. The most brutal loss imaginable, authored by a player who was their own.

Three playoff appearances, three exits before the second round (or early in it). The power play that ranked last this season? It went 3-for-22 in last year’s first-round series. That is not variance. That is a chronic structural problem.

Bednar fired assistant coach Ray Bennett after last spring’s exit specifically because of the power play breakdown. Kadri’s arrival is the personnel fix to go with the coaching change. But the proof will come when the puck drops in April.

The Case For

Here’s what makes me believe this year is different, even accounting for the history.

The depth is genuinely better. The goaltending situation — Mackenzie Blackwood posting a 2.22 GAA and .916 save percentage — is the most stable it’s been since Darcy Kuemper in 2022. Blackwood went 3-4 in the first-round loss last year, which told me he was capable; what he lacked was a team that was clicking on all cylinders behind him. This year’s team is that.

MacKinnon has never been this dominant at 30. His pace this season eclipses anything he’s put up before. When a player of his caliber is hitting this kind of peak — and he’s surrounded by Makar, Landeskog, Necas, Kadri, and a competent goaltender — the upside is legitimate Cup contention, not just regular-season dominance.

The Western Conference isn’t what it once was at the top. Tampa Bay (+410) and Carolina (+550) are the closest challengers, but both are in the East. The Vegas Golden Knights (+1050) are the most credible Western threat, and Colorado has handled Vegas all season. The path is there.

The Case Against

The power play is the story until proven otherwise. Fifteen and a half percent during the regular season is one thing. The playoffs tighten everything up — the neutral zone coverage, the forecheck timing, the defensive structure. A team can paper over a mediocre power play in October. In a seven-game series in May, when referees swallow their whistles and every advantage counts, being a bottom-five power play team is a real liability.

The ghost of Dallas is real too. Two consecutive first-round exits to the same franchise is a psychological fact as much as a statistical one. If Colorado draws the Stars in the first round — and the bracket math makes that possible — they’ll have to beat a team that has beaten them twice and knows exactly how to do it again.

And then there’s the question that follows every dominant regular-season team: does the game change enough in the playoffs to neutralize what makes them special? Against the Kraken in 2023, yes. Against Dallas in 2024 and 2025, emphatically yes. The talent ceiling on this team is higher than it’s been at any point since 2022. Whether that translates is the question.

Where I Land

Colorado is the right favorite. At +260 they’re fairly priced, maybe even slightly undervalued given the distance between them and the field right now. BetMGM reports they have more than double the handle of the next closest team in Cup futures. The market believes in them. So do I — but conditionally.

The condition is the power play. If Kadri and the adjusted systems under Bednar’s staff get that unit performing at league average in the playoffs, the Avalanche are a legitimate Cup favorite in the truest sense. If the power play craters again the way it has in each of the last three postseasons, the regular-season dominance is just a setup for another early exit.

They are, right now, the best team in hockey. The next two months will tell us whether that actually means something.

Do you trust the Avalanche to finally convert this regular-season dominance into a Cup run, or does their playoff track record make you nervous? Let me know on social media — and tell me which team you see as their biggest threat when the bracket sets.