Congratulations to the Colorado Avalanche for claiming the Presidents’ Trophy based on their league-best 121 points. Now, all the Avs must do to make this season feel like an actual success is accomplish something we haven’t seen in nearly 20 years.
The last team to win the Stanley Cup after finishing first overall in an 82-game season was the 2008 Detroit Red Wings. (The Chicago Blackhawks topped a 48-game slate in 2013, then went all the way that spring.)
Although other sports feature some version of the dynamic we see in hockey, the regular season/post-season divide certainly isn’t as pronounced in baseball, football or basketball.
Heck, the past two NBA campaigns have wrapped with the 82-game champs doubling as Larry O’Brien winners. The Boston Celtics took both crowns in 2024 before Canadian hooper Shai Gilgeous-Alexander led the Oklahoma City Thunder to the best record and championship banner in 2025.
The NFL is a different beast with its 17-game schedule and one-game playoff format, but three teams had 14 wins last year and two of them — Seattle and New England — met in the Super Bowl won by Seattle two months ago. Three years ago, Kansas City topped Philadelphia in a championship game that featured the only 14-win clubs in the league.
Even baseball — which features players on playoff clubs clad in hoodies that say some variation of “Anything can happen in October!” every fall — has seen the powerhouse Los Angeles Dodgers win the summer and autumn in 2024, while the 2018 Boston Red Sox were the best team wire-to-wire. (L.A. also did it in the bizarre COVID summer/fall of 2020.)
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Hockey, as we all know though, is a different beast.
Even when teams really go off, as the Avalanche did this year, it’s no guarantee of success. Just the opposite, in fact.
Colorado is just the 13th club to record 120 points or more in NHL history and, of the previous 12 to do it, the only ones that validated the success by hanging a banner were four Montreal Canadiens outfits from the franchise’s incredible 1970s run. Every other team fell short of the ultimate goal. And just to put a finer point on it, three of the last four teams to do it — Boston (135 points in 2023), Tampa in (128 in 2019) and Detroit (124 in 2006) — lost in the first round. The fourth club, the 122-point Panthers from 2022, fell in the second.
Can Colorado buck the trend?
When you look at it, there are some similarities between the Avs and those 2008 Presidents’ Trophy-winning Wings who went all the way. Both clubs have championship know-how, with Colorado being four seasons removed from a 2022 Cup win, while Detroit was five seasons removed from winning the 2002 title (remember, there was a horrible spring in there with no Cup winner, in 2005).
The Red Wings had not one but two all-world world centres in Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg at the top of the lineup, while Nicklas Lidstrom was basically peerless as a defenceman at that time.
There’s certainly some overlap there with an Avs squad that has megastar Nathan MacKinnon as a 1C, supported by the playoff-hardened likes of Gabriel Landeskog, Nazem Kadri and Artturi Lehkonen up front.
Cale Makar might not be a perfect comp for Lidstrom (Norris Trophy 7x, kids), but he’s inarguably one of the best in the game at his position.
In the crease, veterans Dominik Hasek and Chris Osgood basically split the duties 50/50 while winning the 2008 Jennings Trophy for the league’s lowest goals-against average (Osgood went on to be the man in the playoffs). It was essentially the exact same rollout in Denver this season, as Scott Wedgewood (45 games) and Mackenzie Blackwood (39) shared duties as a Jennings-winning tandem.
With home-ice advantage as far as the road goes, all the Avalanche can do is suit up and show the world what they’ve got.
Colorado’s Cup chase begins on Sunday, one day after the 2026 Stanley Cup Playoffs begin with three Game 1s on Saturday. As such, we present our pre-tournament power rankings of the 16 teams that made the derby. To be clear, these are not Cup odds; we’re not taking into account the vicious 2-3 matchups in the Central and Atlantic that will see two of Tampa, Montreal, Minnesota and Dallas bounced in Round 1. This is a straight ranking of the teams as we embark on the best time of the NHL year.
1. Colorado Avalanche (55-16-11) Nothing fewer than 16 wins is going to satisfy this club. Colorado has good-to-great everything.
2. Tampa Bay Lightning (50-26-6) We don’t know when/if Victor Hedman will rejoin the club after taking a personal leave of absence in late March. If Hedman is unable to return, that puts a ceiling on the Bolts. That said, Tampa — banged-up all year — is finally healthy everywhere else, and if the squad gets its captain back sometime during the early stages of the post-season, there’s a run to be made.
3. Dallas Stars (50-20-12) The Stars are obviously hoping defenceman Miro Heiskanen and centre Roope Hintz — both listed as day-to-day — are ready to go very early on in what should be a killer series with Minnesota. After three straight trips to the West final under Pete DeBoer, let’s see if first-year Stars coach Glen Gulutzan can mix up an over-the-top formula.
4. Carolina Hurricanes (53-22-7) As far WC2s go, Carolina is getting a tough draw in the Senators in Round 1. But if the Canes can top Ottawa, they’ve got a very clear path to an Eastern Conference finals, where they’d have home-ice advantage. Twenty years after Eric Stall and Co. won Carolina’s only Cup, captain Jordan Staal and the 2026 Hurricanes have a real kick at it.
5. Buffalo Sabres (50-23-9) The Sabres have been saying for months that they’re not just aiming to end a 14-year drought with a playoff appearance; they want to do damage once there. Well, boys of Buffalo, now’s your chance.
6. Minnesota Wild (46-24-12) You trade golden futures for Quinn Hughes so you can have him play 50 per cent of the games that really matter. It’s go time for Minny.
7. Edmonton Oilers (41-30-11) Even with the usual questions plaguing this team, Edmonton has earned the benefit of the doubt this time of year. Taking nothing for granted, it would be massive for the Oilers if they can slip by Anaheim in fewer than six games and get Leon Draisaitl — who is nearing a return, but surely isn’t 100 per cent healthy — another chunk of rest before Round 2.
8. Montreal Canadiens (48-24-10) It’s funny how two opposite outcomes seem in play for Montreal. It wouldn’t be shocking to see the Canadiens, with their youth and relative lack of depth, get rolled by a savvy Lighting bunch. On the other hand, the Canadiens have serious difference-makers at every position, especially if goalie Jakub Dobes carries his strong play into the playoffs.
9. Vegas Golden Knights (39-26-17) Late-season developments have really changed the complexion of Vegas’ outlook. The team finished 7-0-1 under replacement coach John Tortorella and Carter Hart — who hadn’t played since early January — went 6-0-0 in April with a .930 save percentage.
10. Ottawa Senators (44-27-11) At this point, when you’re talking about Eastern Conference dark horses, you almost have to caveat it with, “and you can’t say ‘Ottawa.’” There’s a reason so many people believe the Sens can make a run, namely the team’s fantastic, season-long underlying numbers. Get some saves and this club can win any series.
11. Boston Bruins (45-27-10) The Bruins have the third-best points percentage in the league since Jan. 1 (.683). That’s a big sample size of being one of the top clubs in the league. The potential problem for the Bruins is, neither their power play nor their penalty-killing has been very good during that stretch and, at some point, you need special teams to step up for you in the second season.
12. Utah Mammoth (43-33-6) The Mammoth might have the best first-round vibes of anywhere in the league this side of Buffalo. Utah finished a fairly flat 16-13-2, but it is in and should be playing weightless hockey to start the first round.
13. Pittsburgh Penguins (41-25-16) It’s downright shocking to see the Penguins in the playoffs, given where most observers believed the franchise was at eight months ago. Now, not only is Pittsburgh in the post-season, the Pens have a path paved with home-ice advantage to the second round.
14. Philadelphia Flyers (43-27-12) See above, minus the home-ice part. Only two teams in the East had a worse points percentage than Philly after the Olympic break. Now, goalie Dan Vladar could give them a decisive advantage in the Keystone State clash.
15. Los Angeles Kings (35-27-20) Yeah, the Kings might be the first team out of the playoffs based on drawing Colorado, but this squad is comfortable in tight-checking affairs and has a game-breaker, Artemi Panarin, that it lacked during all those first-round losses to Edmonton.
16. Anaheim Ducks (43-33-6) A few teams — Utah, Pittsburgh, Philly — have a house-money feel heading into the playoffs, and Anaheim might top the list. This young core will gain all kinds of experience by virtue of playing even one playoff series. Should the Ducks see more than one, it’ll be back-flip time in Orange County.