{"id":540316,"date":"2026-04-04T14:04:28","date_gmt":"2026-04-04T14:04:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/540316\/"},"modified":"2026-04-04T14:04:28","modified_gmt":"2026-04-04T14:04:28","slug":"avs-look-like-champions-heading-into-playoffs-but-can-they-stick-home-ice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/540316\/","title":{"rendered":"Avs look like champions heading into playoffs, but can they stick home ice?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Colorado Avalanche have been skating strong all season and seem to be poised for another championship. They&#8217;re on the verge of securing the NHL&#8217;s top overall seed and the President&#8217;s Trophy, which would give them home ice throughout the postseason. <\/p>\n<p style=\"padding: 0 25px !important;\">Get top headlines and KUNC reporting directly to your mailbox each week when you subscribe to In The NoCo.<\/p>\n<p>Pat Graham covers the Avalanche for the Associated Press. He&#8217;s confident the Avs have everything going for them right now to bring Lord Stanley back to the Mile High City. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Well, where do you start? Let&#8217;s start from the goal on forward. I mean, you have a rock solid tandem and net, and you know, Scott Wedgewood and Mackenzie Blackwood, although Black was struggling a little bit right now, but Wedgwood is holding down the fort,&#8221; said Graham. &#8220;You have an elite defense led by Cale Makar. And then up top, of course, you have Nathan MacKinnon, who&#8217;s fresh off scoring his 50th goal the other night, and now he has two 50 goal scoring seasons in his career.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>But even with all that muscle, some fans were shaking their head this week when the Avs took one on the chin against Vancouver, losing 8-6. Head coach Jerad Bednar let out some frustrations during the postgame. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I mean, it was just a hiccup. I mean, they can, you know, bounce back on Saturday. And, you know, this, this Vancouver loss, doesn&#8217;t look that bad, but right now, it looks bad only because they&#8217;re the last place team in hockey.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The Avalanche hit the road for a showdown against Dallas on Saturday, then return home to take on St. Louis Sunday night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Colorado Avalanche have been skating strong all season and seem to be poised for another championship. They&#8217;re&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":540317,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5116],"tags":[193,192,144,5277,5,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-540316","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-colorado-avalanche","8":"tag-avalanche","9":"tag-colorado","10":"tag-colorado-avalanche","11":"tag-coloradoavalanche","12":"tag-hockey","13":"tag-nhl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116346818670567114","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=540316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540316\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/540317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=540316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=540316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=540316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}