{"id":540739,"date":"2026-04-04T18:45:14","date_gmt":"2026-04-04T18:45:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/540739\/"},"modified":"2026-04-04T18:45:14","modified_gmt":"2026-04-04T18:45:14","slug":"colorado-avalanches-playoff-games-start-saturday-vs-stars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/540739\/","title":{"rendered":"Colorado Avalanche\u2019s \u201cplayoff games\u201d start Saturday vs Stars"},"content":{"rendered":"<p id=\"inline-text-0\" class=\"mt-[18px] md:mt-0 mb-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-secondary my-f-1\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"5r\">The Colorado Avalanche take on the Dallas Stars at American Airlines Center on Saturday afternoon. The Stars lead the season series 2-1, but the Avs can even it up by taking over the game early.<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-1\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-secondary my-f-1\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"5u\">One disadvantage for the Avalanche, however, is that Cale Makar will not be playing. He <a href=\"https:\/\/milehighsticking.com\/losing-makar-is-last-thing-avalanche-need-right-now-01kn2433y9qq\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">got hurt in the blowout victory against the Calgary Flames<\/a> and missed Wednesday\u2019s game, an 8-6 loss to the Vancouver Canucks. There\u2019s a chance that he is available before the postseason, but the Avalanche don\u2019t want to expose hiim to more injury risk than necessary.<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-2\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-secondary my-f-1\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"5x\">The Avs cannot let off the gas pedal in the final eight games of the regular season. They still have something to play for \u2014 the first seed in the Western Conference. Doing so would ensure that they will face the second wildcard team, which isn\u2019t set in stone yet. <\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-3\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-secondary my-f-1\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"60\">I want to see guys like Valeri Nichushkin, Brock Nelson and Parker Kelly chip in offensively. That would almost fully ensure that the Avalanche take home the win. The Stars are sitting Jake Oettinger for this game, while <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/roberttiffin\/status\/2040486881628958803?s=61\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Casey DeSmith will be protecting the net instead.<\/a> While the Avalanche have been \u201cgoalied\u201d at times this season, I\u2019d rather face DeSmith than Oettinger.<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-4\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-secondary my-f-1\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"63\">However, the objective remains the same: They need to take control against every team they face, regardless of caliber. Doing so against the Stars would be a solid way of showing that no team has any business beating them. After all, once the postseason begins, nobody will care about what happened in the regular season. What matters is what is directly in front of you.<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-5\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-secondary my-f-1\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"66\">I would think that Scott Wedgewood gets the start against the division rival Stars, given that he has played better than Mackenzie Blackwood this season. However, if Blackwood does make the start, it could be the beginning of better play by him, which the Avalanche desperately need in case something happened to Wedgewood.<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-6\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-secondary my-f-1\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"69\">Get ready for a fun end to a tremendous regular season for the Avalanche.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Colorado Avalanche take on the Dallas Stars at American Airlines Center on Saturday afternoon. The Stars lead&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":540740,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5116],"tags":[193,192,144,5277,5,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-540739","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\/116347923676875090","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540739","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=540739"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540739\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/540740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=540739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=540739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=540739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}