Three months is a long time in hockey.
It’s long enough for the anger of a playoff loss to fade, for players to leave town, for coaches to watch the film over and over again and for a front office to separate what actually went wrong from what was simply bad luck.
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For the Colorado Avalanche, that should be enough time to know the difference.
The four-game sweep at the hands of Vegas in May exposed problems that had been hiding beneath an extraordinary regular season. Poor puck management. Defensive-zone mistakes. An inconsistent power play. An offense that became too dependent on its stars when the Golden Knights took away the middle of the ice.
Those problems can’t follow Colorado into 2026-27.
And they won’t have exactly the same team trying to fix them.
Jack Drury and Ross Colton are now in Nashville. Joel Kiviranta returned to Dallas. Fedor Svechkov is expected to step into Drury’s spot at center, while veteran Jaden Schwartz, who won a Stanley Cup with the St. Louis Blues in 2019, arrives on a three-year deal.
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Colorado also took another reclamation swing on Fabian Lysell, acquiring the former first-round pick from Boston for Ivan Ivan after moving Valeri Nichushkin to Columbus.
There has been plenty of change around a core that remains very much intact.
But the biggest challenge isn’t rebuilding Colorado’s identity.
It’s making that identity harder to beat.
The Avalanche spent most of last season overwhelming teams with speed. When that worked, they looked nearly impossible to stop. But Vegas showed what happens when an opponent is willing and capable of clogging the middle of the ice.
Colorado has to become better at recognizing when the aggressive play is worth the risk and when the smart play is simply getting the puck out.
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Not every shift needs to end with a highlight-reel banger. Sometimes winning means making the boring play, or whacking away for a garbage goal in vintage Artturi Lehkonen fashion.
That’s especially important in the defensive zone, where too many unnecessary mistakes turned into dangerous chances throughout the season. Colorado’s talent allowed it to survive those mistakes for most of the season. The Golden Knights were ready and executed their gameplan.
The Avalanche also need more answers when Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar can’t take over a game.
MacKinnon going scoreless against Vegas wasn’t the problem by itself. Superstars have bad series. The problem was that the depth of the team, which had been one of Colorado’s strengths all season, couldn’t make Vegas pay enough for focusing its attention elsewhere.
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It wasn’t as if the secondary players simply disappeared.
Nichushkin scored in Game 1. Colton scored the opening goal of Game 2. Then came Game 3.
Nazem Kadri and Drury scored to give Colorado what looked like an insurmountable lead. The Avalanche had the game exactly where they wanted it.
Then Vegas scored five unanswered goals.
That was the moment the series changed. Colorado had opportunities to put the Golden Knights away, but when Vegas punched back, the Avalanche couldn’t deliver another response.
The five-goal collapse put Colorado in a 3-0 hole and ultimately spelled the end of what had been a magical campaign.
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But there’s another layer to that problem heading into next season.
Several of the players who did contribute offensively in the Western Conference Final are no longer in Colorado. Nichushkin, Colton and Drury are all gone, meaning the Avalanche have to replace production that was already important when the games mattered most.
That’s where players such as Schwartz, Svechkov and Lysell could become important. None of them should be expected to single-handedly solve Colorado’s depth-scoring problem, but the Avalanche will need their new additions — along with the returning players — to make sure the offense doesn’t become overly dependent on MacKinnon and the rest of the stars when opponents find a way to take them away.
The power play needs to become a weapon again, too.
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Kadri’s return to Colorado via trade provided the power play with a temporary jolt, but that boost didn’t last long. Kadri suffered a broken finger shortly afterward. While he eventually returned to the lineup, he never really looked like himself again.
And perhaps most importantly, Colorado has to learn how to respond when things stop going according to plan.
That was the most troubling part of the Vegas series.
The Golden Knights erased leads in Games 2 and 3, and Colorado never really recovered. The confidence seemed to disappear. The swagger disappeared with it.
A championship team doesn’t have to avoid adversity.
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It has to know how to answer it.
The Avalanche have spent the offseason changing the supporting cast. Now they have to change what happens when the punches start landing.
The Presidents’ Trophy proved this team can dominate for 82 games. This season, the Avalanche will have 84 opportunities to prove they’ve learned from what happened in May.
The goal isn’t simply to be the best team in the regular season again. It’s to become the team nobody wants to face when everything is on the line.
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