DENVER \u2013 The Colorado Avalanche are aiming for their second Stanley Cup since 2021-22, but the Los Angeles Kings are looking to play spoiler beginning with Game 1 of the Western Conference First Round at Ball Arena on Sunday.<\/p>\n
The Avalanche and Kings last played on March 2, a 4-2 win for Colorado. At that point, D.J. Smith was in his first game as Los Angeles\u2019 interim coach after coach Jim Hiller was fired on March 1.<\/p>\n
But Avalanche coach Jared Bednar is expecting a different Kings team now.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re more dangerous offensively than they were before. I\u2019m sure some of that is coached into the team and I also think the addition of a guy like (Artemi) Panarin, who has over a point a game since joining the team,\u201d he said of the forward, who the Kings acquired from the New York Rangers on Feb. 4 and played his first game with Los Angeles on Feb. 25 following the 2026 Winter Olympic break.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Panarin has 27 points (nine goals, 18 assists) in 26 games with Los Angeles.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe restructuring of their lines since that addition, (Adrian) Kempe, (Anze) Kopitar and Panarin together is a dangerous line. They have their guys slotted. They\u2019ve been a stingy defensive team all year, but on the offensive side of things, since the Olympic break, last 10 games, maybe more, they become even more dangerous offensively. It\u2019s a team that\u2019s played really well since that change, since the break, since the addition of Panarin.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Kings, meanwhile, aren\u2019t expecting much different from what the Avalanche have been all season.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, they won the Presidents\u2019 Trophy (for the best regular-season record) for a reason. They have, how many Olympians on their team? And everybody\u2019s picked them to win. That\u2019s fine,\u201d Smith said. \u201cYou have to manage when they really take over a game and limit that to shorter periods, rather than have it carry on shift after shift.<\/p>\n
\u201cSomeone\u2019s got to go out there, and have a good shift and stop it. And let\u2019s be honest, we\u2019re going to have to have some guys play outside their comfort zone. We\u2019re going to have to have some guys outperform, maybe what they are and that\u2019s what has to happen for teams to knock off a Presidents\u2019 Trophy winner. You need a special performance by one, two, maybe three guys for two weeks, and we got guys in that room that can do it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Teams that take a 1-0 lead in a best-of-7 series have an all-time series record of 535-252 (.680), including a 10-5 (.667) mark in the 2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs (6-2, .750 in 2025 Eastern and Western Conference First Rounds).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DENVER \u2013 The Colorado Avalanche are aiming for their second Stanley Cup since 2021-22, but the Los Angeles…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":555798,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5116],"tags":[193,192,144,5277,5,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-555797","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\/116429948454789879","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555797","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=555797"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555797\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/555798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=555797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=555797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=555797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}