{"id":614728,"date":"2026-04-18T08:52:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-18T08:52:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/614728\/"},"modified":"2026-04-18T08:52:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-18T08:52:08","slug":"colorado-and-los-angeles-face-off-to-begin-the-nhl-playoffs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/614728\/","title":{"rendered":"Colorado and Los Angeles face off to begin the NHL Playoffs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Los Angeles Kings<\/a> (35-27-20, in the Pacific Division) vs. Colorado Avalanche<\/a> (55-16-11, in the Central Division)<\/p>\n

Denver; Sunday, 3 p.m. EDT<\/p>\n

LINE: Avalanche -264, Kings +214; over\/under is 5.5<\/p>\n

NHL PLAYOFFS FIRST ROUND: Avalanche host series opener<\/p>\n

BOTTOM LINE: The Colorado Avalanche host the Los Angeles Kings to begin the Western Conference first round. The teams meet Monday for the fourth time this season. The Avalanche went 3-0 against the Kings during the regular season. In their last regular season meeting on March 2, the Avalanche won 4-2.<\/p>\n

Colorado is 55-16-11 overall and 26-9-6 in home games. The Avalanche have an 18-2-6 record when scoring a power-play goal.<\/p>\n

Los Angeles has a 35-27-20 record overall and a 20-10-11 record on the road. The Kings are 26-4-11 in games they score at least three goals.<\/p>\n

TOP PERFORMERS: Martin Necas<\/a> has 38 goals and 61 assists for the Avalanche. Nathan MacKinnon<\/a> has five goals and five assists over the last 10 games.<\/p>\n

Artemi Panarin<\/a> has 28 goals and 56 assists for the Kings. Adrian Kempe<\/a> has scored 10 goals with three assists over the last 10 games.<\/p>\n

LAST 10 GAMES: Avalanche: 7-2-1, averaging 3.3 goals, 5.7 assists, 2.8 penalties and 5.6 penalty minutes while giving up 1.9 goals per game.<\/p>\n

Kings: 6-2-2, averaging 3.1 goals, 4.5 assists, 3.1 penalties and 7.1 penalty minutes while giving up 2.8 goals per game.<\/p>\n

INJURIES: Avalanche: Nazem Kadri<\/a>: day to day (finger), Josh Manson<\/a>: day to day (upper body).<\/p>\n

Kings: Kevin Fiala<\/a>: out for season (leg), Alex Turcotte<\/a>: day to day (undisclosed), Jeff Malott<\/a>: day to day (undisclosed), Andrei Kuzmenko: day to day (knee).<\/p>\n

——<\/p>\n

The Associated Press created this story using technology provided by Data Skrive<\/a> and data from Sportradar<\/a>.br\/]<\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9 2026 ESPN Internet Ventures. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Los Angeles Kings (35-27-20, in the Pacific Division) vs. Colorado Avalanche (55-16-11, in the Central Division) Denver; Sunday,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":614729,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[298399,64,63,7522,794,7526,575,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-614728","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-298399","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-colorado-avalanche","12":"tag-espn","13":"tag-los-angeles-kings","14":"tag-nhl","15":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=614728"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614728\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/614729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=614728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=614728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=614728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}