Can any team challenge the Colorado Avalanche this year?

That’s the most pressing question across the National Hockey League as we head into the winter holidays, because it’s been a long time since a team dominated the regular season the way Jared Bednar’s club has in 2025.

Most of the league is locked into extremely tight divisional races, with teams separated by just a few points. Parity is playing a role, and so too is the shockingly high number of games being decided by way of overtime and the shootout. The standings, well into December, are a jumbled mess – with one colossal exception.

That outlier is the team with the two-headed monster of Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar. Colorado has raced out to a 23-2-7 (136-point pace) record in an otherwise competitive Central Division, and what’s remarkable is that win-loss record may understate just how impressive this team has been.

Every 60 minutes of hockey this year has seen the Avalanche better than the opposition by +1.8 goals, a staggering level of dominance. And this isn’t a team just going on an all-time shooting percentage run or getting white-hot goaltending over a three-month stretch – the Avs also lead the league in expected goal differential (+1.2 per 60 minutes played), indicative of a team dominating possession and burying their opposition in flurries of scoring chances.

Colorado plays with a blistering pace, seemingly go four lines deep, and are doing all of this despite a power play that somehow ranks 29th in the league (5.1 goals scored per 60 minutes).

Their numbers, at least through a third of the season, look all-time great. In fact, if you compare them to some of the best modern-era teams (2007-25) we have seen over their full 82-game seasons, this Avalanche club looks like the best of all of them.

That’s quite the comment, when you consider how many of the teams below them won a Stanley Cup.

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Colorado might be curiously lacking in a productive power play, but it’s making up for it and then some at 5-on-5. The Avalanche are one of the best teams in the league in transition and are as capable of any team in the league at sustaining offensive zone pressure and generating those multi-shot shifts that put outsized pressure on the opponent’s defensive structure.

Not only do teams have to deal with waves of these Colorado attacks, the regular fight to survive a shift means very little chance to flip the script. Teams are spending so much time defending the run of play, they can’t mount meaningful counterattacks and put pressure on Colorado’s goaltenders on the other end of the ice (via HockeyViz):

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The counting numbers speak for themselves with this Colorado team: MacKinnon (55 points) and Martin Necas (43 points), both sit inside the top five of the scoring race. Cale Makar, as usual, leads all league defencemen in scoring (38 points). And while the Avalanche’s depth has been key to their success, the outperformance you’re seeing is because the team’s best units are pulverizing the competition.

By way of quick example, Colorado is outscoring teams 57-to-16 (+41) in MacKinnon’s minutes at even strength, and 49-to-19 (+30) with Makar deployed. You simply can’t find numbers like this anywhere around the league.

Even in the fleeting moments where teams have been able to put the Avs on their proverbial heels, the goaltending tandem of Scott Wedgewood (91.7 per cent stop rate; +10.5 goals saved versus expected) and Mackenzie Blackwood (91.9 per cent stop rate; +7.4 goals saved versus expected) have been as capable as any unit in the league.

We have seen high-flying Avalanche teams in years past bomb out because of shoddy defensive play and unreliable goaltending. Wedgewood and Blackwood have formed yet another strength of this Avalanche lineup, presenting a daunting challenge for the rest of the Western Conference.

We have seen teams get out of the gates fast like Colorado has this year, but the team’s track record of sustained success and the personnel they have at the top of the lineup makes this run feel sustainable. And if Colorado really has found a goaltending solution to backstop the whole operation, who in the Western Conference can take this team down?

That’s sure to be a question on the minds of the competition as we head into the holiday season and start preparations for the trade deadline.

Data via Natural Stat Trick, NHL.com, Evolving Hockey

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