Colorado Avalanche: Why MacKinnon, Makar, and the Presidents' Trophy Winners Are the Team to Beat in 2026

The Best Team in Hockey Enters the Playoffs as Heavy Favorites

The Colorado Avalanche finished the 2025-26 NHL regular season with a 55-16-11 record and 121 points, both franchise records. They won the Presidents' Trophy as the league's top team, led the NHL in goals scored at 3.63 per game, and clinched the Western Conference's top seed with enough cushion to rest key players down the stretch. They enter the playoffs as +305 favorites to win the Stanley Cup.

This is not a team that backed into pole position. Colorado earned it by being the most complete roster in hockey across every month of the season, and the core driving that success is the same core that hoisted the Cup in 2022: Nathan MacKinnon, Cale Makar, Gabriel Landeskog, and Artturi Lehkonen. Four years after their championship, this group is not aging into irrelevance. It is peaking again.

Nathan MacKinnon Won the Rocket Richard Trophy

MacKinnon scored 53 goals this season, the highest single-season goal total of his career and enough to earn him the Rocket Richard Trophy as the NHL's leading goal scorer. He finished third in the league in both assists and total points, a statistical signature that says everything about how his game has evolved. He is no longer simply a speed-and-skill forward who creates chances through chaos. He has become a clinical, high-volume finisher who converts at an elite rate regardless of situation.

His Conn Smythe odds entering the playoffs opened at +640, making him the betting favorite for playoff MVP. The case is straightforward: no player in the field carries his combination of regular-season production and championship pedigree. The 2022 playoffs were not a fluke. MacKinnon was the engine of that run, and the Avalanche have built the 2026 roster to give him the same supporting infrastructure that made that campaign possible.

Cale Makar Remains the Best Defenseman Alive

Makar took home the Conn Smythe Trophy in 2022 when he was 23 years old and was genuinely the best player in those playoffs, which is a statement that holds up under any level of scrutiny. Now 26, he is the most complete defenseman in hockey: elite in transition, lethal on the power play, capable of matching up against top lines and still generating offense. His 16/1 Conn Smythe odds this year reflect that the market sees multiple legitimate candidates, but Makar's floor is ceiling-level for most players.

The pairing of MacKinnon and Makar gives Colorado a genuine two-superstar infrastructure that almost no other team in the field can match. One player can carry a playoff series. Two players at that level, playing interconnected hockey, can carry a Cup run.

The Supporting Cast Is Legitimately Deep

Brock Nelson was acquired midseason and brought 65 points (33 goals, 32 assists) across 81 games into the Avalanche lineup. He is a 34-year-old second-line center who also won Olympic gold with Team USA at the 2026 Winter Games, arriving in Colorado with playoff experience and the kind of quiet professionalism that complements a star-driven roster without demanding the spotlight. He gives Colorado a second line that can win matchups and produce offense without leaning entirely on MacKinnon's line.

Martin Necas, Devon Toews, Nazem Kadri, and Artturi Lehkonen round out a roster with genuine depth at center ice. Lehkonen posted 48 points (21 goals, 27 assists) in 72 regular-season games and has been one of the league's best complementary forwards in each of the past four seasons. Kadri brings physicality and veteran postseason intelligence. Toews anchors the second defensive pairing and lets Makar operate with the freedom that makes him most dangerous.

Goaltender MacKenzie Blackwood handled the crease workload reliably enough to put Colorado in this position, and his performance in high-leverage regular-season games built some confidence heading into the postseason. Goaltending is always the first place you look when evaluating Cup odds, and Blackwood has done enough to suggest he can hold up.

The Road to the Stanley Cup

Colorado's first-round matchup is against the Los Angeles Kings, and the Avalanche lead that series 1-0 after Game 1. The Kings are a well-coached, defensive-oriented team that can slow pace and grind series into attrition battles. Whether they can sustain that for seven games against MacKinnon, Makar, and the league's highest-scoring offense is a different question.

The analysts projecting potential Finals matchups have pointed toward a Colorado vs. Tampa Bay or Colorado vs. Carolina scenario. Both Eastern Conference opponents are built to push pace and generate offense, which means that bracket is genuinely competitive. But the Western Conference path, in theory, runs through playoff-tested teams that have faced Colorado before and lost.

Betting and Fantasy Angles

At +305, Colorado represents the consensus market favorite. The interesting question for bettors is whether that price already reflects their advantages fully. The value proposition depends on how you weight goaltending uncertainty against the team's offensive and defensive infrastructure.

Makar futures for the Conn Smythe carry more upside than the market gives him credit for at 16/1. In 2022 he was the best player in the playoffs despite MacKinnon's brilliance. A repeat of that dynamic is entirely plausible.

For DFS and fantasy hockey players tracking postseason pools, MacKinnon is the top-ranked skater by almost any projection model. His shot volume, point production in high-danger situations, and power-play usage give him the highest floor of any forward in the field. Makar similarly owns the top tier among defensemen.

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