2026 Stanley Cup Playoffs: Avalanche vs. Golden Knights series preview

May 15, 2026, 16:30 EDT

2026 Stanley Cup Playoffs: Avalanche vs. Golden Knights series preview

Credit: Stephen R. Sylvanie-Imagn Images

Colorado Avalanche: 1st in Central Division, 121 points

Vegas Golden Knights: 1st in Pacific Division, 95 points

Schedule (ET)

Game #	Date	Game	Time (ET)
1	Wednesday, May 20	Vegas at Colorado	8:00 PM
2	Friday, May 22	Vegas at Colorado	8:00 PM
3	Sunday, May 24	Colorado at Vegas	TBD
4	Tuesday, May 26	Colorado at Vegas	8:00 PM
5	Thursday, May 28	Vegas at Colorado*	8:00 PM
6	Saturday, May 30	Colorado at Vegas*	8:00 PM
7	Monday, June 1	Vegas at Colorado*	8:00 PM

*If Necessary

The Skinny

It’s cool to see the Pacific and Central Division winners face off in the Western Conference Final. This is the first time that has ever happened — at least, since the NHL instituted its current four-division format in 2013-14. That’s not a joke. Even in the years when the Chicago Blackhawks and L.A. Kings battled to decide who won the West, they never both led their respective divisions in the same year.

Of course, the Golden Knights only won the Pacific this year because somebody had to. They’d have finished fourth in the Central, just three points up on the Utah Mammoth, whom they vanquished in Round 1. Every team in the Pacific finished with fewer points this season than last year’s Calgary Flames, a team that missed the playoffs entirely. It was one of the poorest collective efforts across eight teams we’ve seen in the modern divisional era, and Vegas is now the final Pacific club standing.

That’s not to call the Golden Knights pushovers, though. They’ve largely had their way with the Mammoth and Anaheim Ducks through the first two rounds of this year’s postseason, and — look away, Toronto fans — it’s primarily been Mitch Marner driving the bus. The much-maligned former Maple Leaf is the NHL’s current playoff scoring leader, with a whopping 18 points through 12 games, and has come through time after time in the biggest moments for this Vegas team. More on him later.

Nevertheless, the Avalanche are the runaway Stanley Cup favorites for good reason. They made quick work of a very good Minnesota Wild team in Round 2, with Brett Kulak scoring the overtime winner in Game 5 on Wednesday to send them to their first Western Conference Final since 2022. It’s truly been a group effort for these Avs, who became even deeper (if that was even possible) after acquiring Nazem Kadri, Nic Roy, and Kulak ahead of the trade deadline. Vegas needed six games to beat both Utah and Anaheim in the first two rounds; Colorado is just one game over the minimum so far.

Head to Head

Colorado: 2-0-1
Vegas: 1-1-1

The Avs and Knights haven’t met in the playoffs since 2021, when they were both members of the temporary “West Division.” Vegas won that series in six games before losing in the West Final … to the Montreal Canadiens. (It was a weird year.)

In the 2025-26 regular season, Colorado and Vegas faced off three times, with the road team winning each game. The Avs won 4-2 in Vegas on Halloween Night, before prevailing 6-5 in a shootout two days after Christmas; Vegas won 3-2 in Colorado on April 11 off of an overtime goal by Jack Eichel.

Top Five Scorers

Colorado

Nathan MacKinnon, 13 pts
Martin Necas, 11 pts
Gabriel Landeskog, 8 pts
Devon Toews, 8 pts
Artturi Lehkonen, 6 pts

Vegas

Mitch Marner, 18 pts
Jack Eichel, 15 pts
Pavel Dorofeyev, 11 pts
Brett Howden, 10 pts
Shea Theodore, 9 pts

Offense

So, back to Marner. After a bit of an inconsistent showing in Round 1 against Utah, in which he scored three of his seven points in the series (and his only two goals) in the sixth and final game, Marner was excellent from start to finish against the Ducks. The 29-year-old winger scored a goal and an assist in Game 1, potted a hat trick and finished plus-4 in Game 3, racked up three assists in Game 4, and capped it all off with the most electrifying goal of these playoffs in Game 6.

Marner always took a ton of heat for his underwhelming playoff showings during his tenure with the Toronto Maple Leafs, but he’s started to emerge as more of a clutch player in recent years. He set up Connor McDavid’s tournament-winning goal at the 4 Nations Face-Off, scored the overtime winner against the Czechs to send Canada to the semifinals at the Winter Olympics earlier this year, and now has more points than anybody in these playoffs. Including his time in Toronto, he has 81 points in 82 playoff games — although seven of his 20 career playoff goals have come in his first 12 playoff contests with Vegas.

Between Marner, Nathan MacKinnon, Brett Howden, and Pavel Dorofeyev, four of the NHL’s top playoff goal-scorers are in this series. Dorofeyev, who is as streaky as they come, leads the way with nine goals (to go with just two assists), which he has scored across five games; he has two one-goal games, a pair of two-goal games, and one hat trick in these playoffs. Howden has been much more consistent, scoring his eight goals across seven different games thus far.

On the Colorado side, MacKinnon has been downright clinical. He scored exactly one goal in each of the five games against Minnesota, bringing his totals for the playoffs thus far to seven goals and 13 points in nine games. He’s riding an active six-game goal-scoring streak into the West Final. But aside from MacKinnon, Colorado’s offense hasn’t been quite as explosive as Vegas’s, in large part because it just hasn’t needed to be. The Avs have generated chances along with the very best of them, but — with the exception of Game 1 against Minnesota — they’ve also been able to grind their opponents into dust without running up the score.

As a result, Colorado is heading into Round 3 with a ton of momentum, but also lots of players who still haven’t shown their very best. Brock Nelson has three points in nine games, as does Valeri Nichushkin; additionally, Kadri, Martin Necas, Ross Colton, Brent Burns, and Sam Malinski have just five goals between them. It’s scary to think these Avs still have room to improve, but they do. Still, their depth is unparalleled — 16 different Avalanche players scored in Round 2, tying the NHL record for the most goal-scorers in a single series.

Defense

Of all the teams still alive in these playoffs, the Avalanche have surrendered the fewest shots against on a per-60-minute basis at 5-on-5. Their top pairing of Cale Makar and Devon Toews has been otherworldly once again, with the on-ice results in expected goals, chances, and shots slanted heavily in Colorado’s favor (near or above 60 percent) during their shifts. At 41 years of age, Burns is still playing significant minutes, although a far cry from when he averaged more than 26 a night with the San Jose Sharks — he’s closer to 18-19 now, but still pushing play in the right direction.

And then there’s Kulak, who has quietly become one of the NHL’s most reliable and playoff-tested defenders over the past six seasons. Remember how Vegas played against Montreal in the West Final back in 2021? Kulak was on that Canadiens team. Then, after being traded to the Edmonton Oilers the following year, Kulak went to the Conference Final with them in 2022, 2024, and 2025, helping them advance to the Stanley Cup Final twice. Now, after being included in the ill-advised Tristan Jarry trade last December, Kulak has found his way to Colorado, and he punched their ticket to the West Final in overtime on Wednesday.

Colorado parted with Sam Girard and a future second-round pick to acquire Kulak in February. Vegas also parted with a member of their last Cup-winning team to add a new defenseman during the season, sending Zach Whitecloud and a collection of futures to Calgary to acquire Rasmus Andersson. That deal hasn’t worked quite as well for Vegas, with Andersson ranking below nearly all his teammates in most puck-possession metrics in these playoffs. The 29-year-old Swede finished the regular season with 17 points in 33 games with Vegas but has just three points (all assists) through 12 playoff contests.

Vegas has reshaped its defense quite substantially since winning the Stanley Cup in 2023, and it’s fair to wonder whether it’s all been for the best. While there’s little they could’ve done to account for Alex Pietrangelo stepping away for health reasons, some of the other moves they’ve made have arguably resulted in them being smaller, softer, and generally easier to play against. Swapping out Whitecloud and Nic Hague for Andersson and Noah Hanifin may have made the Knights a more skilled team, but do they still have the same shutdown ability that enabled them to get past the Oilers, Dallas Stars, and Florida Panthers three years ago?

Goaltending

For the second consecutive series, Carter Hart played in every second of every game for Vegas against Anaheim. While he was quite shaky at times in Round 1 against Utah, Hart put up much better numbers against the Ducks, going 4-2 with a .935 save percentage and a 1.99 goals-against average. He performed better when he faced more shots, making more than 30 saves in each of his four wins and fewer than 30 in both losses. Vegas clearly has no desire to switch goaltenders at this point in the playoffs, but they do have a recent Cup champ in Adin Hill sitting on the bench if Hart falters against Colorado.

The Avalanche used both Scott Wedgewood and MacKenzie Blackwood against the Wild. The journeyman Wedgewood has been the better of the two for most of the season and has gone an impressive 7-1 with a .914 save percentage and 2.21 goals-against average in these playoffs. Blackwood relieved Wedgewood after a tough start in Game 3 and then played all of Game 4, a 5-2 Avs win in which he faced only 21 shots; then, Wedgewood returned after Blackwood gave up three goals on 13 shots in Game 5 and stood tall in relief as the Avs battled back to win in overtime.

Injuries

It’s difficult to come up with an exhaustive injury list for any active team at this stage of the playoffs. Nevertheless, we do know that Avalanche forward Artturi Lehkonen is dealing with something, as is defenseman Sam Malinski — both sat out of Game 5 against Minnesota. And we also saw Cale Makar take a quick stroll down to the Colorado locker room after absorbing this rather innocuous hit by Wild forward Mats Zuccarello.

Makar is the type who won’t miss a game unless his arm has fallen off entirely, so don’t expect him to sit out against Vegas, but he may not be at the full extent of his powers. We’ll see.

Vegas, meanwhile, went without Mark Stone for the latter half of the series against the Ducks. Jeremy Lauzon missed the entire series. Meanwhile, Brayden McNabb also sat out Game 6 against Anaheim, but that was the result of a one-game suspension for his hit on Ducks forward Ryan Poehling in the previous game; McNabb will be back for Game 1 against Colorado.

Intangibles

There are vanishingly few Vegas-to-Colorado connections on either side of this series. The only one of note is Nic Roy, who won the Stanley Cup with the Golden Knights in 2023 before being traded to the Maple Leafs last summer as compensation for Marner’s UFA rights. Then, when it became clear that Toronto would finish well outside the Eastern Conference playoff picture this season, then-Leafs GM Brad Treliving dealt Roy to the Avalanche in exchange for a 2027 1st and a 2026 5th.

This will be the first-ever Western Conference Final appearance for Golden Knights head coach John Tortorella, who took over for Bruce Cassidy with just eight games remaining in the 2025-26 regular season. Torts previously reached the East Final with the Tampa Bay Lightning and New York Rangers, winning with the Bolts in 2004, but this is only his second tenure with a Western Conference team. His first? Who could forget his disastrous one-year stint with the Vancouver Canucks in 2013-14, which gave us the best hockey-related song of the 21st century.

X-Factor

This feels like it might be the series where Martin Necas fully cements himself as the worthy successor to Mikko Rantanen in Colorado. Sure, Necas is coming off a 100-point regular season, which was probably enough to convince most fans that the Avs came out ahead in that swap. The 27-year-old also has 11 points in nine playoff games with Colorado this spring. But only one of those points has been a goal, which has been something of a trend throughout Necas’s career — dating back to this time with the Carolina Hurricanes, he has just 13 goals (and 46 points) in 75 playoff games.

Necas had a very good run of games against Minnesota and set up Kulak for the overtime, series-winning goal seen above. Now, it’s time for him to level up. The Avalanche killed the Wild with their depth, but the Golden Knights have plenty of depth to spare. If Colorado wants to clinch its rightful spot in the Stanley Cup Final for the first time since 2022, it’ll need its stars to drive the bus. A lot of that responsibility will fall upon Necas, and if he can live up to the challenge, it’ll make his new $11.5 million-AAV contract seem like a bargain.

Series Prediction

The Golden Knights are a good team. But they’re not a great team, and they finished a full 26 points back of the Avalanche in the Western Conference standings this season. The Avs have Nathan MacKinnon, who has a very good shot at winning the Hart Trophy this year as the NHL’s most valuable player. They have Cale Makar, who stands a decent chance of winning his third Norris Trophy as the NHL’s top defenseman. They’ve got a remarkably deep forward group, a solid defensive corps, and two veteran goaltenders with strong numbers. They’d be the favorites in a playoff series against any other team in the league.

Vegas has Mitch Marner, Pavel Dorofeyev, and Brett Howden scoring at ridiculous rates, with Jack Eichel setting them up on a rotating basis (he has 14 assists in 12 games). They’ve got a good coach in Tortorella, even if he tends to do silly things from time to time. They’re the best team the Pacific has to offer. Unfortunately, no team in the Pacific would stand a chance against Colorado, and this year, Vegas will be the sacrifice.

Avalanche in six games.

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POST SPONSORED BY bet365

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