Bruce Boudreau is the wrong guy to ask for solace after losing a Game 7. He’s not going to tell you that it gets better or that the feeling goes away.
Boudreau lost seven Game 7s in an otherwise wildly successful NHL coaching career. At least three times with the Washington Capitals and Anaheim Ducks, he had a team that was talented enough and deep enough to win the Stanley Cup.
Each of those teams had a winnable series end in Game 7 heartbreak.
“I go over this in my head all the time,” Boudreau said. “I still scratch my head (at the Montreal series in 2010). I think we really had a good chance of winning the Cup. How the (expletive) does that team beat us?”
The pain is not going away for the Colorado Avalanche anytime soon, either. Colorado has its own sordid Game 7 history — seven straight defeats is an NHL record. Some of those don’t matter to the current Avalanche, but the one that happened last weekend sure does.
This was a tumultuous, roller coaster of a season for the Avs. So many injuries. So many trades. But when everything settled into place, the remolded roster looked like a $100 million war machine.
There were times during its opening-round series with the Dallas Stars when the Avalanche took apart a Stanley Cup contender with ease. But then, faster than you can say Mikko Rantanen was traded twice in six weeks, this season was gone.
“Just prior to Rantanen’s first goal, there was like, nothing going on. There was no threat,” said Ray Ferraro, who was on the ESPN broadcast crew for Game 7. “And then he scored, and then all of a sudden it just flipped. It was stunning.
“They traded Rantanen to their equivalent of the moon — a team you play two times, and you don’t worry about it. Then he gets traded into your backyard. It was the worst possible scenario.”
So now what after another Cup-or-bust season ended in disappointment for the Avalanche?
There’s plenty of statistical data that says the remodeled Avs were an elite team. There’s also the weight of recent history. The losses to the Stars are piling up. The losses to Pete DeBoer-coached teams are piling up.
Are the Avs thisclose to breaking through and delivering a second championship with this core group? Or are they in decline, a club that couldn’t topple its nemesis even when it was missing two of its best players?
Are they six inches away … or six miles?
“That’s really the question,” Ferraro said.
‘Let the dust settle’
Emotions ran high after Rantanen rampaged through the Avalanche. There were calls to fire the coach. There were calls to fire the general manager.
A few days after the collapse in Dallas, assistant coach Ray Bennett was the only immediate casualty. He was done in by a power play that was No. 1 in the league from the day Rantanen was traded until the end of the regular season, but then went 3 for 24 against Dallas and failed to deliver late in two overtime losses.
A first-round loss for a Cup contender elicits emotional spikes. It also means there is more time before the biggest roster decisions for next year and beyond are made.
“You don’t have to do anything right now,” Ferraro said. “I was happy to see Chris (MacFarland) came out and said, ‘Jared Bednar is our coach.’ That takes away all that noise. And I think he really should be. I think it would be foolish to move on from him.
“So now, you don’t have to do anything until the draft. There’s no rush. So for the first week, I wouldn’t do a thing. Get all the departments to file their post-mortems. And then just take a week to let the dust settle. There’s no need to bang your head against the wall right now. If you came up with a great answer today, what are you going to do with it?”
Avs president Joe Sakic was clear about where he lands on the current roster. He said at the club’s end-of-season news conference that he’d run it back with this same group next year.
The salary cap isn’t going to allow that. Colorado has five pending unrestricted free agents, including forwards Brock Nelson, Jonathan Drouin and Joel Kiviranta, plus defensemen Ryan Lindgren and Erik Johnson. Defenseman Sam Malinski also needs a new deal, but he’s a restricted free agent.
The Avs have $8.7 million in space, with the cap ceiling rising to $95.5 million next season. There’s a little more wiggle room because Keaton Middleton has a two-way contract, but that’s only $775,000 more.
Moving Rantanen opened up more flexibility for this offseason, but new contracts with raises for Mackenzie Blackwood and Logan O’Connor have already taken some away.
“The goal might be harder to achieve, but it is to be a deeper team,” Ferraro said. “The teams that win are not sometimes the most razzle-dazzle, but they’ll always have that with (Cale) Makar and (Nathan) MacKinnon. But the goal with trading Rantanen was to build a deeper team, and we’ll see if that happens.”
‘It’s hard to be patient’
Boudreau’s teams in Washington and Anaheim resisted making major overhauls in the immediate aftermath of a great team losing a Game 7. But when the Capitals hit a midseason slump in November 2011, removing him was the change.
That didn’t improve the club’s postseason fate. It took six more years and two more coaches before Ovechkin & Co. broke through for a title.
“It’s hard because owners are impatient,” Boudreau said. “Dallas could very well win the Stanley Cup. So, do you sit there and make a lot of changes when in reality, you were that close to winning? You really have to judge like, ‘OK, what do we have to do differently?’ Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe it was just the odd break in a third period.
“Do you want to try something different, if the formula was so close? The only thing you’d say is it didn’t work, so do something different. But that’s a gamble in itself. It’s really tough to know what’s right.”
If the Avs want to retain Nelson and possibly others like Drouin or Kiviranta while finding a suitable replacement for Lindgren, they will likely need to shed salary elsewhere. If Nelson leaves, the Avs could wait on finding the next in line at No. 2 center behind MacKinnon until someone is available in a trade before the deadline next season.
Even if Nelson leaves, the Avalanche could return with a formidable and familiar lineup, especially with captain Gabe Landeskog back in the fold.
“Let it settle, and then try to answer that question,” Ferraro said. “To me, it’s closer to six inches. You’ve already made significant changes. It’s hard to be patient. It really is. And I don’t know if patient is the correct word, but this is a very good team.
“How can you make it six inches better? Is it resigning Nelson? Someone else there? Is there anything they can do, health-wise?”
Maybe all of the work done on the roster this season will coalesce better in the 2026 postseason. There’s a bit of historical precedent there in Avs history.
The 1999-00 Avalanche had a strong roster, but it was an injury-filled season. Sakic, Peter Forsberg and Adam Foote all missed significant time. They got healthy and traded for legendary defenseman Ray Bourque.
That season ended with a Game 7 loss in Dallas. The glory came the following year.
Just having more stability in net for a full season could help the Avs collect a few more points. Landeskog, Valeri Nichushkin and Artturi Lehkonen have all had injury issues, but when that trio is in the lineup with MacKinnon, Makar and Devon Toews, the Avs are going to feel like they’re still fighting for another championship.
“I think they’re closer than they are farther away,” ESPN analyst Kevin Weekes said. “The Dallas result doesn’t reflect that, and I know the pain and the sting of losing doesn’t reflect that. But I think there are a lot of teams that would be envious, that are envious in terms of … a lot of people would love to have that Avs roster.
“So that tells me that they’re way closer, and I agree with them.”
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