3 reasons the Colorado Avalanche didn't win the Stanley Cup
The Colorado Avalanche are done after two rounds. They won't be winning the Stanley Cup this year.
The Colorado Avalanche are out. They will not be advancing to the Western Conference Finals as the Dallas Stars eliminated them in six games.
There will be no Stanley Cup returning to Colorado this season. Now, every team remaining has either never won the Cup or their last championship came in a year that started with one.
The Avalanche have been an elite team for a few years now but this year's journey will end in the second round.
These are the three biggest reasons that they won't be lifting Lord Stanley's Cup later this June:
The Colorado goaltending didn't match the Dallas goaltending
Alexandar Georgiev is a great goaltender but he wasn't good enough in this series vs the Dallas Stars. He went 2-4 with a .895 save percentage.
On the other side, Jake Oettinger was great for the Stars against the Colorado Avalanche. He went 4-2 with a .911 save percentage.
Georgiev made some big-time saves but not enough to earn the Avalanche the win in the series. A lot of that has to do with Dallas's great play but Colorado made things hard on Oettinger too. He won the battle this time around.
This isn't to say that Colorado needs to go out and make a change this summer but it wouldn't be surprising if they did either. It is never a bad idea to at least consider an upgrade at any position, especially goaltender.
There are times when you wonder how far they can go if they were to keep Georgiev as their number one guy. They haven't made it out of the second round since he took over.
The bottom line here is that the Dallas Stars won the goaltending battle this time around. We'll see how the Avalanche respond to it in the off-season and next year.
Valeri Nichuskin left the team right in the middle of the second round
Some things are more important than hockey. Valeri Nichuskin doing what he needs to do to be a better/healthier person falls into that category. That must be mentioned when talking about his leave.
It did negatively impact the roster on the ice. Nichuskin played in all five games of Colorado's series against the Winnipeg Jets. Remarkably, he scored in all five of them and that includes a hat trick in game four. Having seven goals in the first round shows how dominant of a scorer he can be.
In the second round, he played the first three games before being removed and he scored in two of them. He also had an assist in the first game.
Nichuskin is a dominant power forward who plays the game at a high level. He knows how to put the puck in the back of the net with frequency. Losing him is a big reason they won't be winning the Stanley Cup.
The Colorado Avalanche were good but the Dallas Stars were better
The Colorado Avalanche are elite. With Nathan MacKinnon, Gabriel Landeskog, and Cale Makar there, they have a few future Hall of Fame players leading the way.
They don't have captain Gabriel Landeskog anymore though and you heard about Val Nichuskin already. That is a major hit to the depth that they are supposed to have. They also never truly recovered from the loss of Nazem Kadri to the Calgary Flames.
Guys like Artturi Lehkonen, Zach Parise, Devon Toews, and Casey Mittelstadt are all great as well but they weren't able to match the depth that Dallas has right now.
We know about their veterans like Tyler Seguin, Jamie Benn, Ryan Suter, Matt Duchene, and Joe Pavelski who have all been star players in the NHL before. They became even more dangerous when they added younger stars like Roope Hintz, Jason Robertson, Miro Heiskanen, and Jake Oettinger.
The even crazier part is that they added even younger stars with guys like Wyatt Johnston and Logan Stankoven who contribute at a high level. This Dallas team is incredible. The Colorado Avalanche won't be winning the Stanley Cup because they couldn't beat that wagon from the south.
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