Vegas won Game 1 of the Western Conference Final 4-2 at Ball Arena in Colorado despite getting out-shot 38-28 and out-attempted 80-52. That’s the kind of line score that should make a Game 1 winner uncomfortable. It doesn’t, and the reason is that the two things Game 1 told us are both pointing the same way: Carter Hart is on a heater unlike anything Vegas has had in goal in years, and Colorado does not have an answer for the absence of Cale Makar.
All the numbers in this piece are pulled from the NHL API through May 21. Mark Stone (VGK) and Cale Makar (COL) both did not dress for Game 1; both are expected back at some point in this series, possibly as early as Game 2.
Hart Has Been a Wall All Month
Through Game 1 of the Conference Final, Carter Hart‘s May line reads: eight games, 246 shots against, 15 goals against, .939 save percentage, 1.88 goals-against average. Four of his last five starts are at .939 or better, his last two against Anaheim were .944 and .969, and the 38-shot, .947 night to open the Conference Final. He has stopped 231 of the 246 shots he has faced this month. There are not many goalies in the league capable of stringing together that kind of run in this volume, and Vegas appears to have one of them right now.
This is not a one-game story. In Round 1 against Utah, he was choppier: .939, then .897, .667, .871, .895, .957 across six games, including an early hook in Game 3 where he saw only 12 shots and gave up four goals. Vegas survived that series 4-2 because their offense was good enough to win three or four anyway. From Round 2 onward he has been a different goalie. His six games against Anaheim went 185 shots against, 12 goals against, a .935 save percentage , and a .969 close-out in Game 6 where Anaheim’s best looks died at the post, then a 2-on-38 in Denver. If he plays the rest of this series at his Round-2-and-beyond level , and there is no reason to think he reverts to Round 1 form against a Colorado top six that is hit-and-miss without Makar driving the play , Vegas wins. Goalies on this kind of run tend to either keep going or fall off a cliff. Hart’s last seven starts say he is locked in.
Colorado’s Goaltending Picture is the Second Story
Colorado’s regular-season goaltending was solid going into the postseason. Scott Wedgewood started everything in Round 1 against Los Angeles and went .960, .960, .923, .960, basically perfect against a tired Kings team. Then Minnesota happened:
- Game 1 vs the Wild: 36 shots, six goals, .833.
- Game 2: better at .935.
- Game 3: pulled at .750.
- Mackenzie Blackwood started Games 4 and 5. He went .905 and then .769 in the elimination game, and that .769 is the goaltender that closed the series.
- Colorado then went back to Wedgewood for Conference Final Game 1, and Wedgewood gave up three on 27 (.889). Across the last seven Colorado starts, neither goalie is over .910. Bednar’s options are bad and worse.
Against Hart, that’s a save-percentage gap of roughly 50 points right now. Over six or seven games, that is a series.
The Maker-Shaped Hole
Without Makar, Colorado played Game 1 with Devon Toews logging 27:32, or 5:10 over his regular-season workload of 22:22. Brent Burns at 16:55, Josh Manson at 19:02, and Sam Malinski at 20:31 absorbed the difference. That structure works for one game – it doesn’t work for four.
What Makar takes off the ice with him is not just minutes. It’s three specific things.
First, the matchup answer for Eichel’s line. Vegas’ top line is Ivan Barbashev–Jack Eichel–Pavel Dorofeyev, and Toews can play those minutes, but he cannot drive play and defend that trio for 27 a night across a series. In Game 1 the Vegas top line went a combined -2 in plus/minus, Dorofeyev scored, Eichel assisted, Barbashev was held off the scoresheet. That is a quiet two-point night by their standards, and the Colorado plan to make them quiet required burning Toews’ reserves on day one. The real damage came from elsewhere: Vegas’ second line of Brett Howden–William Karlsson–Mitch Marner went plus-three with a goal from Howden and an assist from Marner. The third line of Brandon Saad–Tomas Hertl–Colton Sissons combined for three assists at plus-three, and Nic Dowd‘s fourth line punched in the empty-netter. Goals from all four lines. That is the depth problem.
Second, the power play. Colorado went 1-for-3 in Game 1 and the power play looked exactly as broken as you’d expect without its quarterback. Makar runs Colorado’s top power-play unit; without his right-hand shot, it completely changes the looks on the Colorado PP.
Third, the transition game. Makar is the engine of Colorado’s exit-and-entry game. Without him, Colorado had 24 attempts blocked by Vegas in Game 1 , meaning Vegas was happy to sit in a 1-3-1 because Colorado’s defense couldn’t generate clean zone entries. Colorado out-shot Vegas 38-28 and out-attempted them by 28, but the actual offense came from the forwards trying to compensate, and Hart was ready for it.
If Makar plays Game 2, this series is a coin flip. Every game he misses, the math says Vegas wins.
Playoff Scoring Leaders and Who Has Actually Been on the Ice
Forget the regular season. Through Round 2, Mitch Marner leads the entire postseason in scoring with 19 points in 13 games, including 7 goals, 12 assists, and a plus-13 rating. Eichel is tied for second league-wide at 16 points (1 G, 15 A, plus-6). Behind them, Dorofeyev has 10 playoff goals, leading the entire postseason outright, with 12 points. Brett Howden, his line mate, sits second in postseason goals with nine, also at 11 points. Shea Theodore has been one of the most productive defensemen left in the playoffs, sitting at nine points (4 G, 5 A) and a plus-8 rating across 13 games. He sits sixth among postseason defensemen behind Quinn Hughes, Lane Hutson, Rasmus Dahlin, Brock Faber, and Jackson LaCombe, but he’s also matched the raw production of Toews in three more games, and Toews has been playing 27 a night to get there. Ivan Barbashev is at nine. Mark Stone, in his nine games, has seven points. Tomas Hertl is at seven. Noah Hanifin and Colton Sissons are at six. Vegas has 10 skaters at six or more playoff points.
For Colorado, Nathan MacKinnon is at a 1.4-PPG pace, 14 points in 10 games on a 39-shot volume that puts him among the league leaders in shot attempts despite playing fewer games than most of the names above him. Martin Necas has 11 points (1 G, 10 A) and has been excellent setting up his line mates. Gabriel Landeskog and Toews both have nine, and Artturi Lehkonen, Nazem Kadri, and Nicolas Roy are clustered at six. Makar, in his nine playoff games before the WCF, had five points , and crucially, that shot total of 22 across nine games is below his normal volume, suggesting the underlying injury issue was likely present before he was officially scratched.
After the top tier, the secondary scoring drops off fast for Colorado. The Avalanche have seven skaters at six-plus playoff points to Vegas’s 10, and that depth gap is the part that compounds across a seven-game series , especially with Stone returning. Vegas can roll three productive lines. Colorado, without Makar, has effectively rolled three forward lines and asked four defensemen to absorb top-pair workload. If Kadri, Necas, or Landeskog go cold for a stretch, Colorado has nowhere to turn for offense beyond MacKinnon. Vegas has options across all four lines.
Vegas’ Defense Core is the Quiet Edge
Vegas’s blueline pairs in Game 1: Brayden McNabb – Theodore on the top pair at 25:42 and 27:22 (both +1, Theodore with five shots), Hanifin – Rasmus Andersson on the second pair at 23:29 and 23:32 (both +1), and Ben Hutton – Dylan Coghlan on the third pair at 10:01 and 8:13. Three balanced pairs, all six defensemen positive in plus/minus, none drowning territorially. The bottom defenseman, Coghlan, scored a goal. That is a healthy blue-line distribution, and it does not require any one player to play 27-plus minutes to make the numbers work.
Colorado’s Game 1 blue line pairs: Toews–Malinski on the top pair at 27:32 and 20:31 (both negative), Brett Kulak – Burns on the second pair at 23:06 and 16:55, and Jack Ahcan – Josh Manson on the third pair at 7:34 and 19:02 (both negative). The Toews–Malinski top pair is the Makar replacement plan , Malinski had a strong regular season (40 points, plus-43 in 82 games) but he is now being asked to absorb Norris-Trophy minutes against Eichel’s line, which is a different ask. That has cascading effects: Kulak gets pushed into Toews’s old spot on the second pair next to Burns, and the bottom pair is Ahcan and Manson. This is what a top-pair injury looks like in the box score.
Even with Makar back, Vegas’ top four defensemen, Theodore, McNabb, Hanifin, Andersson, are a tier above Colorado’s top four.
Prediction: Vegas in seven
The thesis is simple. Carter Hart is the hottest goalie in the postseason and Vegas’ defensive core is, quietly, a tier above Colorado’s right now, especially with Makar out. Colorado’s scoring depth and MacKinnon’s gravity will be enough to steal two or three games on talent alone. But somewhere across seven games, Hart’s .939 versus Wedgewood’s .889 (or Blackwood’s .769) is going to be the difference in a 3-2 third period. That is how Vegas closed Anaheim. That is how they closed Game 1 here. That is how they close this series.
