‘A Wasted 82’: Avs players admit what we all know

Logan O'Connor called it a "waste." Cale Makar blamed the bounces. The truth is ugly — and it's going to follow the Avs all summer

BY JAKE SHAPIRO

May 27, 2026, 12:11 AM

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Six days.

That’s how long it took for the best regular season in the Western Conference to get reduced to a stat line on Hockey Reference. Less than a week for the Presidents’ Trophy winners, a “Cup or bust” mission statement and eight months of buildup to disappear into the desert air at T-Mobile Arena.

The Colorado Avalanche didn’t lose the Western Conference Final. They got swept out of it. And the difference matters — even if nobody in that locker room could tell you why.

“At the end of the day, the regular season means nothing,” Logan O’Connor said. “The only thing a good regular season gets you is home ice. In our case, we squandered that opportunity against this team, dropping two early in the series, and it was an uphill battle from there.”

Then he said what we all are thinking back in the Mile High City.

“It just feels like a waste, to be honest.”

Waste.

That’s the word that’s going to follow this group all summer. Not “close.” Not “unlucky.” Not “we’ll be back.” Waste. From a guy who plays every shift like he knows it could be his last. He did that before and does it now especially after a debilitating hip issue kept him out most of the year.

“You go 82 games, get tons of great pieces, feels like you have a team that can do something special,” O’Connor continued. “At the end of the day, we said it in training camp, it’s Cup or bust for us. And regardless of where you fall short, we fell super short of that goal.”

Cup or bust. Their words. Not mine.

Bust it is. And a loud one, after a postseason that started with so much promise.

Here’s the part that’s going to keep Jared Bednar up at night until October, if he even holds this job: this was more than a sweep. It was pure domination. The Avalanche went over 100 consecutive minutes without scoring while on their death bed. Colorado failed to get shots on goal multiple times for over 10-minute stretches. The turnovers, the lack of toughness and losing four games in a row — all things we never saw with this team this year.

They didn’t get swept by Vegas. They laid down.

“You look back at the four games, there are definitely times where we found our game,” Gabriel Landeskog said. “I think the problem was we found ways to lose hockey games. Through the course of the regular season, in the first two rounds, it was the opposite — even if we didn’t have our A game, we were finding different ways to win hockey games. And against this good of a hockey team in the Golden Knights, they’ll make you pay for your mistakes.”

Mistakes.

O’Connor’s version was darker. “We let Games 2 and 3 slip away from us. Super uncharacteristic from our group to go up with leads like that, especially in consecutive games, drift away from the game plan. They made us pay — opportunistic off our mistakes.”

Drift.

Bednar, for his part, tried to put words to the specific kind of agony that comes with losing this deep into the tournament.

“Losing sucks and losing four straight is worse than losing, I think. The further you go, the worse it gets for me,” Bednar said. “You start training camp, you got lofty goals… and the belief and the hope that you can accomplish those goals grows. You win a round, it keeps building. You win another round, it keeps building. And so the further you go, the closer you get to accomplishing that — and then losing just kind of swipes it all away in an instant.”

Swiped. In an instant. That’s the Avs’ last two postseasons in one sentence.

In a Game 7 where their former star went nuclear to end them in Round 1. And now 12 months later when the NHL’s most evil team just them you for a week straight.

Landeskog has seen every kind of ending this franchise can produce.

“It’s empty. Always is whether you lose in seven, six, five or four. It’s an empty feeling. It sucks. There’s no other way to put it.”

The pain might not scale but the questions sure do. A bad bounce in a Game 7 of a hard-fought series would be begging for a different type of conversation than a butt-kicking.

“You feel for a lot of guys in this room, because there’s definitely no lack of effort anywhere, but sometimes you question the bounces that we should be getting, and just don’t happen,” Cale Makar said. “It’s one chance, one opportunity, and unfortunately, that’s what it was tonight. And they just capitalized on the one extra that we gave them.”

The bounces. Always the bounces. It wasn’t about the bounces this time around. Maybe in Game 4, sure — but it wasn’t the story of this series.

At some point, “the bounces” stop being bad luck and start being a pattern. And patterns in this league get coaches fired, GMs questioned and rosters retooled.

The pattern has been same for the Avs outside of the 2022 Cup run. They’re more skilled, they’re the better team in the regular season when healthy. They’re the favorites on paper.

Then they meet a tough, defensive-minded team and they’re playing golf 10 days later.

O’Connor was right. The regular season meant nothing.

It got them home ice they squandered. It got them a banner that won’t be looked at with glowing memories. It got them a summer of “what ifs” and a fanbase that’s going to spend the next several months screaming about coaching, goaltending and whether brass needs to blow it up.

82 games. Zero parade routes because of the last four.

That’s a bust, and this loss won’t stay in Vegas.