{"id":690364,"date":"2026-05-23T23:05:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-23T23:05:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/690364\/"},"modified":"2026-05-23T23:05:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-23T23:05:09","slug":"avalanche-facing-uphill-climb-in-vegas-trailing-series-2-0","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/690364\/","title":{"rendered":"Avalanche facing uphill climb in Vegas trailing series 2-0"},"content":{"rendered":"

DENVER \u2014 The signs appear grim for the Colorado Avalanche<\/a>:\u00a0Down 2-0 after two\u00a0home losses.\u00a0Missing Cale Makar<\/a>. Three goals in the series for the highest scoring team in the league. Heading to Vegas. History working against them.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe dug a hole,\u201d forward Logan O\u2019Connor said as the\u00a0Avalanche prepared for\u00a0Game 3 at Vegas on Sunday night in the Western Conference Final. \u201cIt\u2019s on us (to get out).”<\/p>\n

The odds, though, are stacked against them. Since 1982, road teams that have gone 2-0 in the conference finals have a 13-0 series record, according to NHL Stats.<\/p>\n

But the Avalanche have worked their way back from a similarly dicey situation before in a playoff series.<\/p>\n

Granted, it was 27 years ago when they lost two straight at home to start the 1999 Western Conference semifinals against Detroit before rallying to win.<\/p>\n

\u201cUphill climb,\u201d Colorado goaltender Scott Wedgewood said. \u201cWe have to flip the script on them, in their rink.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perhaps a change of scenery can provide a spark. Colorado went 2-0 at Vegas in the regular season, including a 6-5 shootout victory.<\/p>\n

\u201cAny building you go into, you can kind of use the crowd noise and advantage in your favor,\u201d forward Parker Kelly said. \u201cTeams come out hard in their home building, so we\u2019ve got to be able to weather the storm, push back and get to our game quick.\u201d<\/p>\n

It wasn’t that long ago when Vegas overcame some long odds. The Golden Knights trailed Colorado 2-0 in a second-round series in 2021, only to win four straight. Avalanche forward\u00a0Nicolas Roy\u00a0recalls it well \u2014 he was with the Golden Knights back then.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve just got to put on our work boots,\u201d Roy said. \u201cIf you have a great effort next game and you win it, then obviously shift the momentum. We believe in this group.\u201d<\/p>\n

Colorado very well could have back Makar, who is up for the Norris Trophy as the league’s top defenseman. He has been sidelined all series by an upper-body injury.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe will tell us when he\u2019s ready to play,\u201d Avalanche coach Jared Bednar said. \u201cNo one can go into Cale\u2019s body and feel what he\u2019s feeling, so when he feels like he can do all the things he needs to be able to do on the ice to play, then he\u2019s going to make the decision to play.\u201d<\/p>\n

The vibe in the room is some anger mixed with some frustration, Bednar said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhich I think is normal. It\u2019s all fine,\u201d said Bednar, whose team is outshooting the Golden Knights by a 68-53 margin. “We\u2019ve got to be better than we were in Game 1 and 2. It\u2019s not like we didn\u2019t go and compete hard or play harder, but again, with it being such a fine line, a mistake or two can cost you the hockey game. We need to do a little bit better job of forcing them into a few more mistakes, and we have to clean up some of our own.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some of Colorado’s top scorers have struggled against the Golden Knights’ stingy defence. Only captain Gabriel Landeskog, Ross Colton and Valeri Nichushkin have goals on Carter Hart in the series. Nathan MacKinnon, who had a league-leading 53 goals in the regular season, has been neutralized, along with 100-point scorer Martin Necas. Another dependable offensive contributor, Brock Nelson, is a minus-5 in the series.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I felt like we played our best game in Game 1 and our best game in Game 2 and we lost, I\u2019d be a little bit more like, \u2018Oh, I\u2019m really worried about this,\u2019\u201d Bednar said. “They still haven\u2019t seen our best, and maybe we haven\u2019t seen their best, either. We have a number of areas in our game that we can improve for Game 3 to give us a better chance of winning.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DENVER \u2014 The signs appear grim for the Colorado Avalanche:\u00a0Down 2-0 after two\u00a0home losses.\u00a0Missing Cale Makar. Three goals…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":690365,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-690364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690364","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=690364"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690364\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/690365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=690364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=690364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=690364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}