Where will the Avalanche finish in the Western Conference?

On today’s episode of "Daily Faceoff Live," Frank Seravalli and Mike McKenna discuss the defending Stanley Cup champions Colorado Avalanche and where they’ll slot in heading into the Western Conference’s stretch run.

Frank Seravalli: Mike, when it’s all said and done in mid-April and the regular season has come to a close, where will the Colorado Avalanche finish in the regular-season standings? 

Mike McKenna: I think they are destined to finish probably third in the Central. I don’t see them slotting into a wild-card spot. 

Frank Seravalli: Third? Why third?! 

Mike McKenna: Well, I mean Minnesota is solid right now, dude. Here’s the problem with the Avs that makes me nervous: [Gabriel] Landeskog's skating, yes, but he was supposed to be back in January and now we don’t know. It looks like you’re still going to have Josh Manson out of the lineup until the end of March, Erik Johnson probably won’t be back from his broken ankle until the first round of the playoffs. So, like, I understand that this team has been solid without them, but I think to really excel they’re going to have one of those two defensemen back in, as well as Landeskog. I think they’ve had solid starts this year. Alexandar Georgiev has given them the best goaltending, but Pavel Francouz is out right now too. So I think they’re going to be able to slot third, just based on the fact they’re missing those players and you really need them if they’re going to make a Stanley Cup run. 

Frank Seravalli: Alright, I’m taking off the oven mitt, but this is a hot take: The Colorado Avalanche, I say, wins the West when it’s all said and done six weeks from now. I just think this is a team fully capable, even with the injuries they’ve had; would anyone blink if they reeled off 12 straight wins? I wouldn’t. This team is super talented ,and if they’re going to get healthy, which they’ll be without Landeskog for the regular season as they don’t have the ability or activate him, but getting those defensemen back just puts this team on another level. I just think with the talent they have assembled, look out in the playoffs if that indeed is the case. If they’re going to finish higher than third, which is where they woke up this morning in the Central Division standings, that means they would have had to of played well in the last stretch in order to finish at the top, and sometimes it’s just the hottest team at the exact right moment in time. Would you be shocked? 

Mike McKenna: Yeah, I would be shocked if they reeled off 12 wins in a row right now. I just haven’t seen it this season on a consistent basis; they’ve been good, but it just comes down to health more than anything. I don’t think they’re as deep at forward. I like the pickup of Lars Eller, but is J.T. Compher really going to be the guy to drive that second line? It looks like it, but they’re a stingy team defensively though, Frank, and that’s the one thing I love about the Avalanche — but they don’t have that X-factor in goal. I don’t look at Georgiev the same way I look at Jake Oettinger or Juuse Saros. Georgiev will have to prove it to me. 

Frank Seravalli: They are I think the fastest team in the league, and that means something. I agree, we could’ve actually done the Avalanche in that conversation with the Dallas Stars in terms of an underwhelming trade deadline and the acquisitions of Eller and Jack Johnson. If they had the cap space, which they did in the $7 million they pay Landeksog, why didn’t they spend more of it, and why didn’t they get a real impact player?

But nonetheless, I think back to the All-Star weekend when we interviewed Nathan MacKinnon and you can hear the shock in his voice when talking about how bad this season has been and how banged up they’ve been. Yet it’s still in their sights. They are six points away from first place in the Western Conference; the fact they could still pull that off, given how they’ve had a Murphy’s Law stage with the injuries this year, everything that could go wrong has gone wrong for the Avs and yet they can still win the West? To me, that’s the mark of a really, really good team. 

You can watch the full episode here…