{"id":667894,"date":"2026-05-27T10:54:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T10:54:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/667894\/"},"modified":"2026-05-27T10:54:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T10:54:08","slug":"avalanche-find-sweep-in-western-conference-final-hard-to-swallow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/667894\/","title":{"rendered":"Avalanche find sweep in Western Conference Final hard to swallow"},"content":{"rendered":"

Colorado rolled through the first two rounds of the Stanley Cup Playoffs, sweeping the Los Angeles Kings in the first round and defeating the Minnesota Wild in five games in the second.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Makar didn\u2019t play the first two games of the conference final because of an upper-body injury, and by the time he returned in Game 3, the Avalanche were already in a hole, having lost their first two games at home.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Another loss in Game 3 made advancing to the Stanley Cup Final even more of a challenge, but Colorado was determined to keep fighting.<\/p>\n

The Avalanche fell a goal short in Game 4, and it was all over earlier than anyone expected.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it just feels like a waste to be honest,\u201d forward Logan O’Connor<\/a>\u00a0said. \u201cEighty-two games, you get tons of great pieces (players) and it feel as though you have a team that can do something special. And for us, at the end of the day, we said it in training camp, it\u2019s \u2018Cup or bust\u2019 for us. Regardless of where you fall short, we fell super short of that goal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Colorado went into the series against Vegas knowing the margins would be tight but did not imagine being on the wrong side of all of them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt there were times where we were really good in this series,\u201d Makar said. \u201cIn Game 2 (a 3-1 loss) we had a one-goal lead going into the third period and stuff happens, a couple of bounces.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Game 3 we\u2019re up (3-0 in the first period) and lose that (5-3), and it\u2019s tough. There was definitely no doubt in this room going into this game that we could push through and drag these guys back to Denver. But it\u2019s one opportunity and that\u2019s the series.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Colorado rolled through the first two rounds of the Stanley Cup Playoffs, sweeping the Los Angeles Kings in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":667895,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-667894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/667894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=667894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/667894\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/667895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=667894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=667894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=667894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}