With just over a week left in the regular season, the playoff fate of the Colorado Avalanche is still unknown. The reigning champs could win the Central Division, finish second or third, possibly fall into the wild card or win out and make a bid for the top seed.
Colorado has seven games left in its season, starting with the Sharks in San Jose on Tuesday night, the first of two games there. The Avalanche have one game in hand on Dallas and Minnesota, the two teams they are battling with for the division title, and there are signs they’re getting healthier.
Forward Artturi Lehkonen (broken finger), defenseman Josh Manson (lower body), goaltender Pavel Francouz (lower body) and captain Gabriel Landeskog (knee), who has yet to play this season, are all on this four-game swing through California, but on Monday, coach Jared Bednar wouldn’t say if any of them would be able to play on the trip.
Getting any — or all — of them back would be a huge boost for Colorado (45-24-6, 96 points). All four made big contributions in the playoffs last season and their returns would make the Avalanche one of the deeper teams in the postseason.
Lehkonen and Landeskog are top-six forwards, and adding them to a group led by Nathan MacKinnon (97 points) and Mikko Rantanen (49 goals) would make the Avalanche tough to beat.
MacKinnon has found another gear down the stretch despite teams game-planning for him. He had two goals in a key 5-2 win over Dallas on Saturday, his 32nd multi-point game of the season.
“Some guys will dry up offensively. Well, Nate’s the exact opposite,” Bednar said. “The tougher it gets, the more he finds ways to be a big difference-maker.”
While Colorado has its eyes on a repeat, the Sharks are in a race to the bottom. San Jose (22-39-15, 59 points) have the fourth-fewest points in the NHL and are going to receive a high pick in the June draft.
The Sharks have hurt their chances of drafting everyone’s top pick, Connor Bedard, by putting together a winning streak. San Jose was 17-26-11 on Feb. 12 and then went 2-13-4 to fall to last in points. Then came wins over Winnipeg, Vegas and Arizona, and its chances of winning the No. 1 pick dropped from 25.5 percent to 9.5.
The coaches and players aren’t focusing on the lottery, just playing hard.
“You get rewarded for doing the right thing, and we’re going to keep playing our (backsides) off and we want to win hockey games,” Sharks coach David Quinn said after his team’s 4-3 overtime win against Vegas on Thursday. “I get the narrative and the big picture, but you get rewarded for doing the right thing.”
Even though they won’t be in the playoffs, the Sharks might have reason to celebrate. Erik Karlsson has 95 points to lead all NHL defensemen and is one of the leading contenders for the Norris Trophy, given to the top defenseman. Twenty-two points separate Karlsson from the next defenseman in scoring, and he has nine more points than last year’s winner — Cale Makar of the Avalanche.
–Field Level Media
