ANAHEIM, Calif. — There is plenty of potential drama in the coming days for the Colorado Avalanche, but the message for Game No. 82 was pretty simple.
When the Avs hit the ice Sunday night at Honda Center to face the Anaheim Ducks, they already knew what lay ahead — a first-round blockbuster Stanley Cup Playoffs series with the Dallas Stars, which will likely begin next Saturday or Sunday deep in the heart of Texas.
“I just want to see us go play hard like we did (Saturday) night,” Avs coach Jared Bednar said following his club’s 5-4 defeat in Los Angeles.
After bulldozing its way through the schedule for a month after the 4 Nations break, Colorado has cooled off with little left to play for and a mounting injury list. The Avs entered the final day of their regular season with five losses in the past eight games. Bednar hasn’t loved his team’s emotional engagement at times during this stretch, but has also been sympathetic most nights, given the circumstances.
The Avalanche sat at 100 points before facing the Ducks and are locked into a third-place finish in the Central Division. Because of a scheduling quirk, there will be more regular-season games around the league through Thursday night.
The Avs began Sunday in seventh place in the overall NHL standings. Defeating the Ducks, even with a depleted roster, and getting to 102 points would give them a better chance of staying ahead of a few teams behind them, but Colorado could still drop behind four teams — Carolina, Tampa Bay, Florida and Edmonton — as well.
In the short term, that is meaningless. But, as Bednar put it recently, if this team goes where it wants to — on a deep playoff run — finishing ahead of any of those teams could be the difference between having home-ice advantage in the Western Conference Final or Stanley Cup Final or not. The Avs will definitely begin the first round in Dallas and would likely begin the second round in Winnipeg, unless the conference-winning Jets get upset by either St. Louis or Minnesota.
While the Avs will have a long wait, it could be beneficial. Nathan MacKinnon skipped the final three games of the regular season because of a minor injury and should be fine for next weekend, but the status of Colorado’s other injured players — forwards Jonathan Drouin and Ross Colton, defensemen Josh Manson and Ryan Lindgren — is unclear.
A break could also be beneficial for goaltender Mackenzie Blackwood, who made his final start of the regular season Saturday night and will make his first career Stanley Cup Playoffs start in Dallas. Blackwood has often been brilliant for the Avalanche in an early December trade.
But his past four outings, all during this stretch where the team has little to play for, have not been at the same level. He went 1-3 in those starts with an .866 save percentage.
“I think he hasn’t played as good as he did when he first got here,” Bednar said Saturday night. “So he’s got to hone in on his game here quickly. I still have a lot of confidence in him. I don’t know that you can blame him for some of the goals we gave up (Saturday night).”
Potentially the biggest development for the Avalanche during the final weekend of the regular season did not come in Southern California, but about 1,100 miles away in Loveland. Captain Gabe Landeskog played not just his first game in nearly three years, suiting up for the Colorado Eagles in his first career AHL game, but he played in back-to-back games and collected a goal and an assist Saturday night.
If his repaired right knee reacts favorably to the stress he put it through this past weekend, it is fair to expect he’ll be at Avalanche practice on Tuesday. The team will likely have an update on his status Monday.
“It’s been good. Honestly, it’s been really good,” Landeskog told reporters Saturday night in Loveland. “Obviously, I’ve been skating for a long time now, and I’ve been working on all nuances of skating. Like it’s one thing to be on the ice and skate and do certain drills, but it’s another one to do it in a game, (at) game speed and game intensity.
“I know I put the work in. I know I’ve put my time in and now this weekend, I’ve gotten a chance to just not put it to the test but take the next step and just trust my training, trust where my knee’s at, and it’s been feeling really good.”
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