Colorado Avalanche Get Great News Ahead Of Playoffs

Friday, April 17, 2026 ,
Colorado Avalanche head coach Jared Bednar reacts during 2026 game.

The Colorado Avalanche won 55 regular season games, claimed the Presidents' Trophy, earned home ice throughout the Western Conference playoffs, and finished with 121 points, which was eight clear of the Carolina Hurricanes for the best record in hockey. 

They did all of that while dealing with a late-season wave of injuries that would have derailed most teams. Now, with Game 1 against the Los Angeles Kings on Sunday, coach Jared Bednar told reporters that he expects his full roster to be healthy and dressed. 

The injury list heading into the final week of the regular season was pretty concerning. Cale Makar had been out with an upper-body injury sustained March 30 against Calgary, which was a loss of the team's best defenseman and one of the two or three most important players in the league. 

Nazem Kadri, who was re-acquired from the Flames at the trade deadline and gave the Avs arguably the best center trio in hockey alongside Nathan MacKinnon and Brock Nelson, has been out five straight games with a finger injury suffered in St. Louis on April 7. 

Coach Jared Bednar himself missed two games this week after taking a puck to the face on April 11, a corneal abrasion and multiple facial fractures, with assistant coaches Nolan Pratt and Dave Hakstol handling the bench by committee. 

Josh Manson and Devon Toews have also been managing undisclosed injuries throughout the year, and Brock Nelson was also listed with an undisclosed ailment. 

The Lineup That's Coming Together

Makar returned to the lineup this week, and Bednar's confidence about full health by Game 1 extends to Kadri, whose finger injury did not require surgery and has been recovering for over a week. 

Manson, Nelson, and Toews each appear to be managing precautionary situations rather than structural damage. Gabriel Landeskog, who fought back through long-term injury since the 2022 Cup run, is healthy and warmed up, as are Artturi Lehkonen, Ross Colton, Joel Kiviranta, and the goaltending tandem of Mackenzie Blackwood and Scott Wedgewood. 

The projected playoff lineup Colorado could ice at full strength is almost unfair: MacKinnon centering the first line, Nelson at second, Kadri on the third, with Makar and Toews anchoring the blue line. 

Bednar floated the idea of spreading the wealth rather than stacking, like putting Landeskog with MacKinnon, Nichushkin and Colton on the second, Lehkonen and Kadri on the third, with Kelly, Drury, and O'Connor filling the fourth. 

That's a deep forward group.

The Series

Their first-round opponent is the Kings, who squeaked into the second Wild Card spot with a 35-27-20 record after a loss to Calgary on Thursday dropped them there for good. 

Anze Kopitar's final season has been bittersweet, with Los Angeles making the playoffs for the fifth straight year but losing Kevin Fiala to a season-ending leg fracture sustained at the Milano-Cortina Olympics and Andrei Kuzmenko to a lower-body injury requiring surgery. 

Both losses were significant enough that the Kings pursued and landed Artemi Panarin in a trade. Colorado swept all three regular season matchups this year (4-1 in LA in October, 5-2 at home in December, 4-2 in LA in March), and owns a 16-4 record against the Kings in their last 20 meetings. 

The history is even more lopsided in playoff series, with the Avs winning both all-time matchups over Los Angeles in seven games in 2001 and 2002. 

The Avalanche are listed as +300 Stanley Cup favorites at DraftKings and BetMGM heading into the postseason. Interestingly, no Presidents' Trophy winner has claimed the Cup since Chicago in 2012-13. 

Photo Credit: Isaiah J. Downing-Imagn Images

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