Which 2026 playoff team stands the best chance of stopping the Colorado Avalanche?

Apr 23, 2026, 15:46 EDT

Which 2026 playoff team stands the best chance of stopping the Colorado Avalanche?

Credit: Jerome Miron-Imagn Images

As the Presidents’ Trophy winners and the odds-on Stanley Cup favorites, it should come as no surprise that the Colorado Avalanche already have a 2-0 series lead over the Los Angeles Kings in the Western Conference quarterfinals.

Every single member of our 10-man panel here at Daily Faceoff had the Avalanche dispatching the eighth-seeded Kings in the first round. Six of us predicted a sweep. It makes sense: Colorado is just four years removed from its last championship, and after swinging big trades for Brock Nelson, Martin Necas, Nazem Kadri, and Nic Roy, this is their best-looking group since they last won the Cup.

Of course, even if these Avs are so dominant, it’s far from guaranteed that they actually end up going all the way. No Presidents’ Trophy winner has won the Cup since the 2013 Chicago Blackhawks, and Colorado has bowed out far earlier than expected in each of the past three seasons.

Still, this year just feels different. It’s no secret the Kings are a bit of a doormat, having failed to win so much as a single playoff round since 2014, and they’re giving the Avalanche a prime opportunity to warm up their engines. Even as the series shifts to L.A. for Game 3 on Thursday evening, it feels inevitable that Nathan MacKinnon and Co. will eventually advance to face a bigger and better opponent.

Assuming the Avs do get past the Kings, which teams will stand the best chance of slowing them down? Can anybody stop them outright? Here’s a look at five teams that could match up against them the best.

5. Edmonton Oilers

The Oilers are coming off back-to-back trips to the Stanley Cup Final, having lost to the Florida Panthers both times. But it’s also worth remembering that, because of the NHL’s silly division-based playoff format, the Oilers didn’t have to face Colorado in 2024 or 2025. In fact, the last time these two teams met, the Avalanche punched their ticket to the 2022 Final in a four-game sweep.

The Oilers have come a long way as a team since then. Their 2024 and 2025 iterations were legitimately formidable and likely would’ve given the Avalanche a far more difficult test. Still, it’s fair to wonder if Edmonton would’ve gone as far as they did the last two years if Colorado had stood in their way, and this time around, it feels like an Avs/Oilers series would be another mismatch.

Goaltending aside, the two biggest knocks against the Oilers during the Connor McDavid/Leon Draisaitl era have been their secondary scoring and two-way play. Their support group has really taken a hit, with the likes of Dylan Holloway, Warren Foegele, Corey Perry, Connor Brown, and Evander Kane being replaced by a less battle-tested collection of players. More concerningly, McDavid just doesn’t look like himself, with zero points through two games against the Anaheim Ducks.

We’ll see if the Oilers make it back to the West Final — they can’t face Colorado any earlier — but if they do, it likely means McDavid and Draisaitl have figured out. Even so, the Avalanche will be a much tougher out than anyone in the Pacific Division.

4. Vegas Golden Knights

The Golden Knights have faced the Avalanche in the playoffs only once in their history, and that was during the COVID-affected 2021 postseason. That year, the Avalanche shot out to a 2-0 lead at home before dropping the next four games, including a 3-2 overtime loss at home in Game 5 that turned the entire series on its head.

That 2021 Golden Knights team was still very much on the rise. Alex Tuch scored one of the goals in that Game 5 win; the next year, Vegas swapped him out for Jack Eichel, and the following year, they won the Stanley Cup. They still had Jonathan Marchessault, Chandler Stephenson and Max Pacioretty, and Nic Roy was still on their side. William Karlsson was healthy and logging a ton of minutes.

This year’s Knights are, well, different. Eichel and Mark Stone are still dangerous, and they’ve since added Mitch Marner, Tomas Hertl, Rasmus Andersson, and Noah Hanifin. But they no longer have Marc-Andre Fleury between the pipes, nor do they have Marchessault, who won the Conn Smythe Trophy in 2023. This year’s Golden Knights team won just one of three games against the Avalanche during the regular season, and it was in April, long after Colorado had clinched a playoff spot, and without Kadri or Cale Makar in their lineup.

Like Edmonton, Vegas is currently tied in its quarterfinal series against a team with very little playoff experience. But their opponents, the Utah Mammoth, are, at least, already from the ultra-competitive Central. Still, the Knights have many of the same flaws that the Oilers do, and they don’t even have McDavid, Draisaitl, or Evan Bouchard. But they do get a leg up on Edmonton by virtue of having beaten Colorado in their last playoff matchup.

3. Minnesota Wild

A few different permutations would be required for Colorado to face either the Oilers or the Golden Knights at any point in these playoffs. However, if the Avs do get past the Kings in the first round, they’d be guaranteed to meet one of the Wild or the Dallas Stars immediately thereafter.

The Avalanche haven’t faced the Wild in the playoffs since 2014, when MacKinnon was a fresh-faced rookie. Gabriel Landeskog is the only other Colorado player remaining from that series, which Minnesota won in seven games. Of course, these Wild have virtually nothing in common with their 2013-14 counterparts, save for defensemen Jared Spurgeon and Jonas Brodin. But this year’s Wild team is arguably the most star-studded group they’ve ever had, with Quinn Hughes joining Kirill Kaprizov, Matt Boldy, and Brock Faber to form a truly impressive nucleus of talent in the State of Hockey. (Minnesota and Colorado both won two out of four games in their 2025-26 season series).

The Wild currently trail the Stars two games to one in their quarterfinal series, which seems virtually guaranteed to go the distance. Owing to the NHL’s ludicrous playoff format, one of these top-five teams will be eliminated in the first round, while the other will advance to face the Presidents’ Trophy winner. It’s a very, very silly system, and it’s the main reason why the Avalanche haven’t made it back to the Western Conference Final since winning the Cup. In any event, the team that makes it out of the Central gauntlet will be absolutely exhausted by the end.

2. Tampa Bay Lightning

The Lightning kicked off the 2020s with back-to-back Stanley Cup championships, and they came within two games of securing a rare three-peat before being vanquished by Colorado in the 2022 Final. But after that, the Lightning lost in the first round in three consecutive seasons, with the Panthers denying them in both 2024 and 2025 before going on to win consecutive championships of their own.

This time around, the Panthers aren’t a factor. The Lightning have a relatively clear path ahead of them, although they’ll have to get past the Montreal Canadiens first — and those two teams have significant recent playoff history of their own, with Tampa having beaten Montreal in the 2021 Final. Of course, Colorado and Tampa will both have to win three rounds before they can face each other; the home team won both games when the Avalanche and Lightning met up in the 2025-26 season.

In many ways, the Lightning are the Eastern equivalents of the Avalanche. They’ve retooled in a similar manner since their championship wins, having swapped out Steven Stamkos and Mikhail Sergachev for Jake Guentzel and Darren Raddysh. They still have the same head coach who led them to glory all those years ago in Jon Cooper. And at the forefront of it all, they have the same elite talent, with Nikita Kucherov fresh off a 130-point season and Andrei Vasilevskiy still at the top of his game.

In a decade defined thus far by repeat matchups and champions, it’d be neat to see these two titans meet up once again. The Avs might be the chalk pick, but it’d probably be closer to a coin flip.

1. Dallas Stars

Finally, we’ve reached the one team that might genuinely be favored against the Avalanche in a playoff series. If not for the Stars, we might be talking about MacKinnon, Makar, and Jared Bednar as two- or even three-time Stanley Cup champions. Instead, the Stars have stymied the Avs in each of the last two postseasons, and it looks more likely than not that we’ll get to see them go up against each other once again this year.

Last spring, it took the Stars the full seven games to get past Colorado in the first round, and it was only because of ex-Av Mikko Rantanen that Dallas was able to defeat their Central Division rivals. After Colorado took a 2-0 lead early in the third period at the American Airlines Center, Rantanen went nuclear, scoring a hat trick and adding an assist in the final 13 minutes to cement a 4-2 Stars victory.

Rantanen, of course, spent the first decade of his NHL career in Colorado, winning the Cup in 2022, but was traded twice in the 2024-25 season — first to the Carolina Hurricanes, and then, to the Avs’ arch-rivals in Dallas. It added yet another wrinkle to one of the most celebrated intra-division battles in the sport, one that has spanned seven different playoff matchups in the past.

The Avalanche and Stars faced off four times in the 2025-26 regular season, with both teams winning twice. The most recent meeting occurred on April 4, with the two teams battling to a scoreless draw until Necas and MacKinnon tallied the game’s only goals past the midway mark of the third period. Since then, the Stars have held their own admirably against an extremely motivated Wild team, with Rantanen, Wyatt Johnston, Jason Robertson, and Miro Heiskanen looking as dangerous as ever.

If anyone is capable of stopping the Avalanche dead in their tracks, it’s these Stars — and with two more wins over Minnesota, they might get their chance to do just that.

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POST SPONSORED BY bet365

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