The Wraparound: Avalanche on cusp of playoff breakthrough

Since the 2017-18 season the Colorado Avalanche have gone from being an exciting, young up-and-coming team, to a legitimate Stanley Cup contender and top-tier NHL team. They drafted and developed a great core, utilized their salary cap space to build a deep, talented roster around Nathan MacKinnon, Gabriel Landeskog, and Mikko Rantanen, and made some sensational, franchise-changing trades. They have hit home runs with most of their roster transactions over the past five years.

All of that talent and regular season success means there are going to be high expectations. Those expectations are a sky-high level this season and another step forward is going to be expected. They are now at at a point where just simply making the playoffs and winning a round is not going to be viewed as enough.

For the past four years they have had consistently topped out at the Second Round, losing at this point in each of the past three seasons (with a first-round loss before that). But they enter Wednesday’s Game 5 against the St. Louis Blues (8 p.m. ET) with a chance to finally break through that ceiling and advance to the franchise’s first Western Conference Final since the 2002 season, and for the first time with this core of players.

So far, this Avalanche team certainly looks like it is playing at a different level than recent teams. They enter Wednesday having won seven of their first eight playoff games this season, and have been completely dominant in doing so. They play at a different speed than everybody else, and you not only see it with the eye test when you watch them, but the numbers are absolutely dominant so far.

As of Wednesday they are controlling 61% of the total shot attempts during 5-on-5 play, have close to a 60% share