"We have one step left, and I don't feel like any of our guys are satisfied," Colorado coach Jared Bednar said Tuesday. "Advancing has been great, but it hasn't been our goal from the start. Winning the whole thing has been, and our guys are focused on that and seem like they're determined."
The Avalanche will face either the New York Rangers or Tampa Bay Lightning; the Eastern Conference Final is tied 2-2 after the Lightning won 4-1 in Game 4 on Tuesday. Colorado swept the Nashville Predators in the best-of-7 first round, defeated the St. Louis Blues in the second round in six games and swept the Edmonton Oilers in the Western Conference Final. The Avalanche trailed in each series-clinching game, including Monday, when they rallied for a 6-5 overtime win against the Oilers in Game 4.
"It just shows our resiliency in that room," Colorado captain Gabriel Landeskog said. "Obviously you put in a lot of work to get better as a team, but also to prepare yourself for situations like this. So, that's why it's important throughout the year that you don't take any nights off.
"I think the bottom line is, when you have a chance to put a team out and to eliminate them, that's what you want to do. It's never easy getting that fourth one, as we saw in Nashville (5-3 win on May 9) and as we saw last night. It's never an easy task, but the guys stayed focused and we were able to get it done and it feels good."
Despite the success, Landeskog said the Avalanche are only allowing themselves a few days to enjoy their accomplishment.
"It's important to enjoy the journey and important to enjoy the moment," Landeskog said. Obviously, [we're] keeping our focus on the main goal. We all know what that is. I'm proud of the group and proud of what we've done so far, but we're not done. I think you flip the switch pretty quickly.
"Once we show up to practice, we've got to put some work in and keep our intensity up and fine-tune some things. Before we know our opponent, we still got work to do."
Bednar said the longer the Eastern Final lasts, the more time he and his staff is allotted to prepare for the next opponent.
"You're kind of watching the game, trying to pick up what you can, see how other coaches are handling their teams in different situations," Bednar said. "Then we'll dig into the video and analytics of it, probably as we're going along here because we have some time and we don't know what the schedule is going to bring or how long this series is going to go. But we'll have a lot of hands on it here and paying attention to both teams here as they as they move forward."
The extra time off also provides an opportunity for players to heal. Forwards Nazem Kadri (Game 3) and Andrew Cogliano (Game 4) each sustained an undisclosed injury in the conference final. Kadri has 14 points (six goals, eight assists) in 13 games this postseason; Cogliano has two goals and one assist in 11 games.
"We have a couple of guys that are banged up a little bit, Bednar said. "[Cogliano's] out for now, similar situation to Kadri. We'll see how things go and what his time frame will be. We're not really sure on either one of those guys yet and what the timeline is going to be."
