It feels like Avs are going to win the Stanley Cup, while Nuggets exit early

That’s why they play the game.

It’s a phrase we’ve heard thousands of times in sports, yet it still works.

Every year, the NHL and NBA playoffs are good for a couple of surprises. If the winners and losers were already predetermined, why even bother showing up? That’s what makes this time of year so great. The unpredictability, the chaos and even sometimes unlikely champions.

The Colorado Avalanche weren’t an unlikely champion a season ago, far from it. The oddsmakers had them pegged from the jump as the best team in the league, favorites to win the whole thing. And they delivered with relative ease, posting a very clean 16-4 playoff record and never seeing a series go more than six games.

The Denver Nuggets had a bad draw and rotten injury luck. Back-to-back MVP Nikola Jokic did his best to carry a roster full of journeymen through the regular season, but getting the eventual champion Warriors in Round 1 was unfortunate. Golden State dispatched Denver in five games before going on to win it all… again.

In both great news and awful news, it feels like history is going to repeat itself during the upcoming playoff runs for each team. The Avalanche are going to win their second Stanley Cup in two years, while the Nuggets exit far too early. Call it a gut instinct, call it a sneaky feeling, but this is the direction we’re headed.

The two teams could not enter the postseason in more different mindsets. The Avalanche are one of the hottest teams in hockey, winning in all kinds of ways during an impressive four-game road swing out in California.

It took OT against both the Sharks and Ducks, but eventually the better team prevailed. Really, Nathan MacKinnon prevailed, as he scored a couple of memorable overtime winners. Even though the Avalanche didn’t play their best hockey, they found ways to win. They learned how to do it last summer and have carried that ability into this year, even with struggling to stay (and get) healthy.

Meanwhile, March and April couldn’t have gone much worse for the Nuggets, as all the good basketball they played to start the season is a distant memory. Losses to the likes of the Bulls, Spurs and Rockets will do that, as it’s easier to remember the brutal defeats than the great wins. That’s just how Nuggets fans are wired, a fanbase that’s been tortured with unexpected losses over the years.

And while the confidently cool Jared Bednar seems to push all the right buttons, Michael Malone seems wired tight. You can tell it in how the teams play at times, reflecting the personalities of their respective head coaches. Bednar’s going to be here a long, long time. Malone might not be here come May.

While it feels like the Avalanche are about to go on another 2.5 month journey toward a championship, the Nuggets could be in Cabo in a few weeks. Denver’s basketball team could even join the dubious 8/1 club, on the wrong side of some of the biggest upsets in NBA history. They limped so badly to the finish line that a tough matchup (cough, Lakers, cough) might make them a one and done.

Whereas there’s no one in the Western Conference that can beat the Avalanche four times in seven games. If they take care of business these last three contests, they’ll win the Central Division. That means a likely date with Seattle in Round 1 while Minnesota and Dallas battle it out and someone has to go home. It couldn’t line up more perfectly.

Once the Avs win the West, they will face a terribly tough East team. But whoever emerges from that conference will be battered and bruised, perhaps not ready for one more fight of a lifetime. Before you know it, we’ll all be back at another parade.

Maybe months from now this column will be spot on, or maybe it’ll be dead wrong. But right now, this is the way things are trending for both teams. And that would bring us plenty of joy, but also yet another round of heartbreak.

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