No one has described this Colorado Avalanche season better than Jon Cooper.
The Tampa Bay Lightning coach was speaking to the media ahead of a Jan. 6 game against the Avalanche, and he said the phrase “three regulation losses.” It wasn’t what he said though, it was how he said it.
There was a little chuckle. It felt inadvertent and instinctual. Like the coach who has won the Stanley Cup twice and a Four Nations gold medal couldn’t help but offer a “this doesn’t even seem possible” reaction.
If Cooper caught one of the clips from Jared Bednar’s postgame press conference Saturday night, it probably brought a wry smile to his face … but also some long-term concern.
Cooper has coached a team like this Avalanche bunch, one that made a historical march through the regular season. Dominant, magical, record-setting, the whole deal — except there was no storybook ending.
The 2018-19 edition of the Lightning was a war machine. Feeding off a devastating Game 7 loss in the Eastern Conference Finals the year before (sound familar), Tampa Bay roared through the season en route to a then-league record tying 62 wins. The Lightning finished with 128 points, 21 more than anyone else.
Tampa Bay had the No. 1 offense, the No.1 power play and was tied for the best penalty kill. The Lightning were “only” tied for seventh in goals allowed per game. Nikita Kucherov paced the league with 128 points, while he, Steven Stamkos and Brayden Point all finished with 40-plus goals.
“Well, we’re going to bring back some memories here,” Cooper said when asked about his 2018-19 team and how he handled the second half of the regular season. “We didn’t run into a whole slew of adversity. To be honest, we would not play well and still win. Everything we touched turned to gold.
“It was just one of those seasons. When you win 62 of 82, that’s kind of what has to happen.”
And then … it all came crashing down. The Lightning took a 3-0 lead after one period of Game 1 in its opening playoff series against the Columbus Blue Jackets and then what came next was one of the most stunning collapses in sports history.
Columbus rallied back to take Game 1, 4-3. Then it just got more progressively shocking. The Blue Jackets rolled in Game 2, winning 5-1 in front of a stunned Tampa Bay crowd.
The series shifted to Ohio, and the Blue Jackets just kept rolling. They won Game 3, 3-1, to push the juggernaut to the brink. Then, the final blow — Tampa Bay rallied in Game 4 to even the score at 3-3 in the second period before Columbus regained the lead a minute later and eventually completed the sweep with a 7-3 victory.
Tampa Bay was outscored 19-8 in the series and 19-5 after the first period of Game 1.
“The problem was, when adversity hit in the playoffs, we didn’t handle it very well,” Cooper said. “I think that adversity carried on to the next couple of years for us that we got to learn from some things that happened in our past.”
The 2025-26 edition of the Avalanche has found a little bit of adversity. Colorado has lost four of the past six games, and doubled the amount of regulation losses since Cooper’s dumbfounded laugh. His team gave the Avs one later that night.
That Tampa Bay team lost back-to-back games just twice in the regular season, and one set included defeats in overtime and a shootout. This Colorado squad did lose four games in a row early in this season, but 0-1-3 with three points collected doesn’t really hit the same.
This past stretch — losses to Florida and Tampa Bay, then two decisive wins, an overtime loss to Toronto and a stinker against Nashville — led to Bednar’s first truly negative assessment of his team this season.
Colorado’s coach said he hated everything about the 7-3 loss to the Predators, save for a decent stretch in the second period, maybe a brief burst in the third. He made it clear he wasn’t happy with the team, and it wasn’t just an off night. He’s seen some trends slipping in the wrong direction, particularly the defensive commitment that has been a hallmark of this club’s historical success in the first half.
“I’m not going to dissect everyone as an individual,” Bednar said. “I mean, I appreciate the question, but we were no good. There were a lot of guys that were no good. So I’m not going to just pick apart a couple guys. We’ve got to be better than that. That was not even close to the standard of hockey that we want to play.”
It’s not hard to see that one of the issues is the players who are missing. The Avs were able to navigate missing Valeri Nichushkin for a handful of games earlier this season — something that has troubled them in the past. But losing Devon Toews and Gabe Landeskog in back-to-back games has hurt.
Having both goaltenders working through minor issues led to a great story with Trent Miner getting his first win and shutout, but it also led to Mackenzie Blackwood having a so-so night in his first game in more than two weeks.
There are still nine games before the Olympic break, and it’s unclear when Toews or Landeskog or Joel Kiviranta will be back. When the Avs stormed to an absurd 31-2-7 record, one thought was, well, individual results in the second half of the season aren’t going to matter all that much as long as Colorado keeps its place at the top of the Central Division and has home-ice advantage locked up.
That might still be true, but this next stretch of games carries far more significance than anyone could have expected just a few weeks ago.
This Colorado Avalanche juggernaut has found some adversity. Now, it is time to sort it out and bank some memories that could be immensely valuable during the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
“I’ve been in this league 13 years now and (magical seasons) don’t happen very often,” Cooper said. “I’m very thankful I was able to be part of one of them. It is unique. It is special.
“But, you never really want adversity, but in the end, you kind of hope it does happen at some point. You don’t want it to be too easy, because the playoffs are really, really hard.”
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