Colorado Avalanche 2025-26 season preview: Playoff chances, projected points, roster rankings
By Shayna Goldman, Sean Gentille and Dom Luszczyszyn
When the Avalanche won it all in 2022, it felt like they were on the cusp of a generational run. Colorado was one of the league’s best-run operations, powered by an unbelievably strong core few teams could even hope to match.
The Avalanche seemed inevitable as the league’s top team for years to come. The team to fear every year — the next Blackhawks, Penguins or Lightning.
Life hasn’t quite worked out as expected, but after a tumultuous season with lots of moving parts, the Avalanche look hungry to get things back on track. For the first time in three years, the Avalanche start the season in the league’s top five.
The projection
Life has not been quite as kind to the Avalanche since 2022.
Dwindling point totals coupled with two first-round exits and one loss in the second round is not going to cut it for a team led by two of the game’s best players. But that’s hockey, baby. Even a projected top-three team like Colorado is still only 50-50 to advance past the first round. Anything more sometimes takes more than just talent.
Make no mistake, though — this team has talent. Lots of it. This might be the deepest Avalanche team we’ve seen since that Stanley Cup win and that gives them not only a high chance of contention but a path to the conference final.
It’s tight, but Colorado starts the season in the Central Division’s driver’s seat. This could be the year they make real noise again.
The big question
Do the Avalanche have someone who can fill Mikko Rantanen’s shoes?
Plenty has changed for the Avs since their Cup lap. The biggest one yet came this past January, when contract negotiations with Mikko Rantanen gave way to one of the more shocking NHL trades of the 21st century.
Seemingly overnight, the Avs had to start figuring out life without their second-best forward, who was one of the best wingers in the NHL and the primary running mate for their MVP-caliber center.
Before we get to the short- and long-term options for replacing Rantanen, it’s worth more firmly establishing how the Avs look without him in the mix. The bright side: Nathan MacKinnon is great no matter who he plays with, and he was the engine alongside Rantanen.
Over their final three seasons, up until the trade, MacKinnon and Rantanen played more than 2,500 minutes together at five-on-five. They were, of course, outstanding; with them on the ice, Colorado outscored opponents 159-108, a goal share of nearly 60 percent. In Rantanen’s 782:22 away from MacKinnon, that number dipped to about 43 percent. That held true for virtually every other statistical category, too; expected goal share went from 55 percent to 42, and scoring chances from 59 percent to 45. MacKinnon, meanwhile, basically held steady on his own.
After the trade, with Rantanen fully out of the picture, MacKinnon’s five-on-five point production increased (2.25 per 60 to 2.5), mainly due to his playmaking (0.85 primary assists per 60 to 1.31). His on-ice share of actual and expected goals did, too — both were over 60 percent.
To be clear, we are not attempting to argue that Colorado is a better team without Rantanen; we’re making a point about just how good MacKinnon remains.
It’s also a point about how well MacKinnon seemed to mesh with Martin Necas, Colorado’s primary return for Rantanen and the leading candidate to take over his spot on a permanent basis. MacKinnon and Necas played 290 five-on-five minutes together after the trade, and the results were outstanding. With them on the ice, Colorado controlled 64 percent of shot attempts, 65 percent of the expected goal share and 66 percent of scoring chances, not to mention outscoring opponents 16-9. Individually, Necas put up 28 points in 30 games. Seems simple enough.
There are long-standing issues, though, with Necas’ off-puck play. He’s an end-to-end machine who creates a lot off the rush, but that comes at a cost. Layered on top is the consistency question — Necas has alternated good and not-good seasons going back to 2020-21. Last season, he was good. Is that a harbinger of doom? Too soon to say. Still, he’s the obvious choice to stick with MacKinnon and Artturi Lehkonen.
We should, however, allow for the possibility that Gabriel Landeskog climbs all the way back to first-line status, and that’s based on two factors.
The first is how incredible he was before knee problems robbed him of nearly three full seasons. In 2020-21 and 2021-22, he played to a plus-17.1 and plus-21 Net Rating pace — that’s franchise-player stuff. The second is how shockingly effective Landeskog was in his five postseason games: 1G, 4A, and an expected goal share of 62 percent. If that’s what he looked like as he worked through three years’ worth of rust, nothing should be ruled out.
Valeri Nichushkin is another option — he averaged a plus-12.5 Net Rating from 2021-22 to 2023-24 — but availability has become an issue for him as well.
The fact that Nichushkin is Plan C here is a good sign for the Avs. The fact that MacKinnon and Lehkonen remain in their spots is even better. Replacing Rantanen falls somewhere between difficult and impossible, but Colorado is well-situated to make a nice attempt.
The wild card
Do the Avalanche have a strong enough second pair?
No team in the NHL has its first pair settled quite like the Avs. Cale Makar, Devon Toews, rinse, repeat. The best way to approach the rest of the game, though, is a fair question.
The second pair of Sam Girard and Josh Manson, after Manson’s two-year contract extension, seems to be back for another season. In 2024-25, Colorado was outscored 26-16 with them on the ice. Goaltending played some part in that — their expected goal share was only a bit below break-even — but some improvement would help.
Girard is a better bet than Manson in that department; he’s a good skater and particularly effective at starting the transition game, but his offensive game, in terms of point production and contributions to shots and scoring chances, has declined over the past two seasons. His size (5-foot-10, 170 pounds) is also an issue in the playoffs.
A third pair of Brent Burns and Sam Malinski is interesting, but Burns really started to show his age in his final season with the Hurricanes and Malinski probably lacks the ceiling to effectively play bigger minutes on a Cup contender. Colorado is starting the season with more than $2 million in projected cap space. As that accumulates, it’ll be easy to imagine it going to defensive upgrades.
The strengths
Every year, MacKinnon shows that he is one of the best players in the world. Sometimes he plays the hits: powerful skating, elite play in transition, high-danger passing, a dynamic shot and all-around dominance. Other times, he finds new ways to separate himself from the rest of the league, such as by navigating life without Rantanen and with a slightly different supporting cast.
A plus-26.3 Net Rating is the third-best in the league. It’s the backbone of the Avalanche’s forward group.
Only Connor McDavid stands firmly ahead of MacKinnon. The opinions of the insider panel in this year’s Player Tiers project were split between him and Leon Draisaitl for that No. 2 spot at the top of the league.
“On any given day, either of them can be,” one executive said over the summer. “I think I would take MacKinnon, because he’s just such a force of nature. He’s not McDavid, but he’s one of the very few players that could touch a puck at any spot on the ice and turn it into a goal.”
MacKinnon isn’t the only game-breaker in Colorado, either. Cale Makar is the best defenseman in the world, with a plus-19.4 Net Rating. That’s double the value of the average No. 1 defender. His offensive impact on the game is unmatched among defensemen, and his play back in his own zone is what separates him from Quinn Hughes, the No. 2 in the league.
Initially, we had him separated from the McDavid-Draisaitl-MacKinnon tier as the lone defenseman in 1B. But the insider panel convinced us he belongs at the top of the MVP class.
“He scares the s–t out of me when he’s on the ice with his pure ability to make a play out of nothing,” one analyst said.
“I think Cale is that version of Connor on the back end. And I don’t think it’s even close,” an executive added.
Together with MacKinnon, the Avs have one of the most dynamic one-two punches in the league. In 939 five-on-five minutes with MacKinnon and Makar on the ice, the Avs outscored opponents 49-33 and rocked a 60.9 percent xG rate.
As for Toews, he is a really strong defenseman in his own right, but playing alongside Makar obviously takes him to another level. He’s solid offensively and sound in his own zone, with a team-high plus-3.9 Defensive Rating. That all-around play brings him up to a plus-8.0 Net Rating, which is slightly below average for a No. 1 and outstanding for a No. 2. Makar and Toews’ combined influence is enough to bring this blue line up to a plus-17.1 Offensive Rating, which leads the league.
Unlike this time last year, the Avs have a No. 2 to lean on at center, too. Brock Nelson looks like he could be the stabilizer that line has missed since Nazem Kadri’s departure.
Nelson was the best center on the trade market last spring. He is active and reliable in all three zones, with his ability to retrieve pucks, transition up the ice and create quality offense. He just didn’t adapt to his new surroundings as quickly as the Avs could have hoped. But in the postseason, the coaches may have found a combination that clicks.
Small samples have to be taken with a grain of salt, but in 42 five-on-five minutes, Landeskog, Nelson and Nichushkin earned a 67.8 percent xG rate and outscored opponents 4-2. That could be a promising combination if Necas and Lehkonen stick with MacKinnon on the top line. That would give the Avs two reliable scoring lines, which they lacked this time last year.
Before the Nelson trade, in December 2024, the Avs completely overhauled their goaltending situation. Colorado traded Alexandar Georgiev, and his risky netminding, for Mackenzie Blackwood, who rebuilt his value with the Sharks.
Blackwood struggled to live up to the hype in New Jersey and was held back by injuries over the years. But he thrived behind total defensive chaos in San Jose; he saved 11 goals above expected in 2023-24, and showed it wasn’t a fluke with a strong start to last season. Blackwood went on to earn a .913 save percentage and a GSAx of 18.3 in Colorado.
“I think we can be looking at a guy that’s going to be a top-10, top-15 goalie in the league,” a former goalie said.
The weaknesses
As much as Blackwood’s athleticism and skill have shone over the last couple of years, that injury history could be crushing if it rears its head in Colorado.
Scott Wedgewood rebounded in a big way from a down 2023-24 in Dallas and a poor start to last year in Nashville. He saved 8.03 goals above expected in 19 games as the Avs’ backup. But he may not be able to sustain that level in a starting capacity at this point, making Blackwood’s health and consistency all the more important.
Offseason signing Brent Burns is another wild card at 40 years old. As it stands, he’s the third-most valuable defenseman in Colorado, but with a minus-0.4 Net Rating, he falls below league-average for that role.
With the Avs, Burns likely won’t have to play as heavy or as tough a workload as he did with the Hurricanes. That said, while a third-pair role is more fitting at this point in his career, he also won’t have the support of the Canes’ system or Jaccob Slavin to help mask some aging impacts that have slowed him down.
So between Burns and a questionable second pair, there are a few potential pitfalls on the back end.
The Avs should be able to find some cap space to make low-key additions at the deadline. But their assets are starting to dwindle. The prospect pool is thin, and after last year’s spending, the team is already without its top three picks in 2026.
The blue line isn’t the only area that could use a potential in-season upgrade, either. Colorado is a very top-heavy team, but even within the top six, there are some question marks. It starts with Necas, who has to play up to the level of a true No. 2 forward. In theory, Nichushkin and Landeskog’s first-line-caliber play should balance out where he lacks. But that requires Landeskog getting back up to full speed (and maintaining it) across an 82-game season. Nichushkin also has to prove that he can be relied on, since his extended absences have left the team short-handed.
There aren’t too many risers from the bottom-six who could step up if needed, either, and that’s especially true down the middle. Ross Colton, at least, had positive two-way impacts last year. Jack Drury, on the other hand, had the opposite effect.
On the wings, Logan O’Connor is a defensive ace, while Ivan Ivan was solid in his own zone last year. But neither one threads the needle offensively. Victor Olofsson has an effective shot, but needs to be in the perfect situation to produce. That could strain this team when MacKinnon and Nelson aren’t on the ice.
The best case: 117 points
Landeskog looks like his vintage self, Nichushkin stays healthy, Burns stabilizes the defense and the supporting cast around MacKinnon and Makar has never looked better. The Avalanche cruise to another Stanley Cup on the back of their dual MVP-caliber forces.
The worst case: 92 points
The supporting cast is stronger, but it’s not good enough to make up for the lack of a second forward star behind MacKinnon, and not available enough to matter. Blackwood’s own injury concerns lead to more Wedgewood, fewer points and a wild card berth.
The bottom line
Led by MacKinnon and Makar, the Avalanche always have a chance. But unlike the last few years, it’s not just a chance to reach the playoffs. Colorado has the ceiling to be the best in the Central and a top-five team in the league.
References
How the model works
How the model adjusts for context
Understanding projection uncertainty
Resources
Evolving Hockey
Natural Stat Trick
Hockey Reference
NHL
All Three Zones Tracking by Corey Sznajder
(Photo: Isaiah J. Downing / Imagn Images)
