Avalanche gear up for Stanley Cup repeat bid after overcoming injuries

DENVER -- The Colorado Avalanche could have given up. The defending Stanley Cup champions were plagued by injuries and buried in the standings halfway through the season.

But not only did they fight back to make the Stanley Cup Playoffs, they won the Central Division.
They are a threat to repeat entering Game 1 of the Western Conference First Round against the Seattle Kraken at Ball Arena on Tuesday (10 p.m. ET; ESPN, SN360, TVAS, ALT, ROOT-NW).
"We had the option of kind of, you know, saying, 'Aw, we won the Cup last year. Whatever. Let's just chalk it up and go on to next season,'" center Nathan MacKinnon said. "But we dug in.
"It's definitely the most resilient team I've been on, for sure, just the way we battled to win the division. It's really impressive."
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Go back to Jan. 12, when the Avalanche played the Chicago Blackhawks, who were last in the NHL entering the game. Colorado lost 3-2 and fell to 1-6-1 in eight games.
"That was a tough one, because it felt like we actually played hard that game and still lost," MacKinnon said. "So that's when you start to really question things."
The Avalanche were 14 points behind the Dallas Stars for the Central Division lead and four points behind the Edmonton Oilers for the second wild card into the playoffs from the Western Conference.
"Everybody kind of little bit counted us out maybe in January, and there was some hesitation even our minds," forward Mikko Rantanen said. "But we found a way, and 'determination' is one good word to describe us."
The Avalanche went 31-8-4 the rest of the way, including 7-0-1 in their final eight games to win the Central. They had a .767 points percentage after Jan. 12, third in the League behind the Boston Bruins (.798) and the Oilers (.795).
MacKinnon had 72 points (31 goals, 41 assists) in 43 games in that span, second to Edmonton Oilers center Connor McDavid, who had 74 points (29 goals, 45 assists) in 39 games. Rantanen had 55 points (28 goals, 27 assists) in 43 games in that span, tied for fifth in the NHL.
To clinch the division, the Avalanche needed to defeat the Nashville Predators on Friday in the last game on the NHL schedule. After the Avalanche blew a 3-1 lead playing on the road in their second game in two nights and third in four, MacKinnon scored with 1:42 to go to win it 4-3, giving him four points (three goals, one assist).
"He's a competitor," coach Jared Bednar said. "Deep down, that's what it is. I mean, no better example than the other night in Nashville.
"We looked a little bit tired. We did some really good things early, put the puck in the net. They created a couple chances, made it even, and he just took over the game, for me. He ends up winning it for us on a hat-trick goal. He just wasn't going to be denied."

The Avalanche lost 463 man games to injury in the regular season.
Captain Gabriel Landeskog accounted for 82. Defenseman Cale Makar -- the reigning winner of the Norris Trophy, voted the NHL's best defenseman, and Conn Smythe Trophy, voted the playoffs' most valuable player -- accounted for 22. The list goes on.
Yet they made no excuses.
"I think the mentality was really, really strong in this team, and it comes from the coaching staff, from the front office," Rantanen said. "We push to be better always, and obviously we as players, we want to push too.
"We don't want to get satisfied, because that's the worst thing you could do, get satisfied and kind of just say it's going to be easy for us. It won't be, and we know that. It tells the mentality of the team and the strength we have."
It should serve them well in the playoffs, especially now that they're relatively healthy. Landeskog won't play due to a knee injury, but almost everyone else is ready to go.
"There will be nothing new to us come playoff time," Bednar said. "This team has had to grind and fight for every win, and lots of them didn't come easy, and we found different ways to do that, and that's what you have to do come playoff time."
If people think the Avalanche are ground down by the regular season and unlikely to last through two more months of the playoffs, they should hear what MacKinnon said as he sat in the locker room after practice Monday.
This is the best part, the whole point of their perseverance.
"It's so much fun," MacKinnon said. "It's just so much fun playing each round, away buildings, coming here to play. It's just so much fun compared to Tuesday in January, so it's great. It's just great.
"I think about the [Stanley Cup Final]. I'd love to just get back there, at least, and just enjoy it even more than I did last time, I think. I'm just really trying to take it all in."