3 reasons the Avalanche won't win the Stanley Cup in 2024

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We are getting so close to Colorado Avalanche hockey as the 2023-24 NHL season is just a few weeks away. The 2022 Stanley Cup champions are looking to make another run. It has been a good few years for them and they want it to continue.

They were defeated in the first round of the 2023 playoffs as the defending champions. The Seattle Kraken defeated the Avalanche in a great series to make sure that the champs would not repeat.

Now, after a long summer off for the first time in a long time, the Avalanche are getting ready to take a big run again this year. They are sure to be one of the best teams in the National Hockey League once again. It should be a very entertaining group.

There is a lot of hope that they can win the Stanley Cup for the second time in three years. They have some of the great superstars in the game that make their team great enough to believe that they can win any year.

The Colorado Avalanche are one of the best teams in the Western Conference.

When you have guys like Nathan MacKinnon, Cale Makar, and Mikko Rantanen amongst others on the team, there is a lot of firepower to go around. They also have a ton of experience in the regular season and the playoffs which should help them.

However, it doesn’t feel like this is going to be a year in which they are going to take it all. These are the three reasons that they are not going to win the Stanley Cup again:

1. The Central Division will make it hard

The Colorado Avalanche plays in one of the best divisions in the league.

The Colorado Avalanche are going to be playing against some stiff competition in 2023-24. The Central Division of the NHL is a very good one as the teams in it all think they will be competitive.

Teams like the Chicago Blackhawks and Arizona Coyotes have a long way to go so they won’t be a big problem for a squad like the Avalanche but that is about where the lowly team list in this division ends.

The Winnipeg Jets, Nashville Predators, and St. Louis Blues are all question marks. They could all be very good and they could all sink this year. How they begin the year will likely determine how they handle things as far as the trade deadline and their prep for the future.

The top of the division is where things get interesting. The Dallas Stars are right there with the Avalanche for being known as the best teams in the league and the Minnesota Wild are trying to rise to that status. Those three teams are going to battle hard all season long.

If the Avalanche gets past one in the first round, they’d likely have to battle another one in the second round. Either way, the division will make both the regular season and playoffs very difficult for all the teams in it.

(Photo by Matthew Stockman/Getty Images) /

2. Gabriel Landeskog is missing from the lineup

The Colorado Avalanche are going to be missing their captain this season.

The Colorado Avalanche is a team loaded with stars, as mentioned before. One star notably omitted from the list right now is their captain Gabriel Landeskog. He is dealing with an injury that is not one that is fun to hear about.

After missing the entire 2022-23 season, he had surgery on his knee that is going to keep him out for the entire 2023-24 season as well. He hopes to be ready for the playoffs but what type of player would he even be by then as everyone else is already in late-season form?

Landeskog is one of the best power forwards in the NHL. When he returns and has a full training camp ahead of him, he should get back to that elite status but that is a long time away from now. They are going to miss him this season.

Landeskog’s absence is going to be one of the reasons that they don’t win the Stanley Cup this season. Tomas Tatar is going to be there to try and make up for some of the lost production this time around but it won’t be the same.

Nathan MacKinnon and Mikko Rantanen are certainly going to miss having their Swedish buddy on their line once again. Hopefully, he will be able to get back at some point so he can begin trying to help this Avalanche core grab that second Stanley Cup.

3. Connor McDavid and the Edmonton Oilers

The Colorado Avalanche may have a hard time dealing with Connor McDavid.

The Colorado Avalanche are one of the best teams in the league and they have some of the best players in the league. However, the best player in the league is Connor McDavid of the Edmonton Oilers. He is as good as anyone who ever lived.

McDavid is going to come into this season as angry and motivated as he’s ever been. The guy who went number two in his draft, Jack Eichel, won the Stanley Cup last year. Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar had Stanley Cups before that.

Auston Matthews is going to start making more money than McDavid next year. All of these things have to be weighing on him as a player. Only time will tell if he is able to get over that hump with this current Oilers team. Having Leon Draisaitl by his side certainly doesn’t hurt him.

The Avalanche might have a hard time with McDavid’s team in the regular season this year and in the playoffs. This isn’t a bad word for the Avalanche, it is a compliment to McDavid and the Oilers. They are going to be a hard out and keep a lot of teams from winning it all in 2024.

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