In spite of their franchise-record road success, the Avalanche maintained throughout the final weeks of the regular season that playoff home ice was a worthwhile goal to chase.
Nathan MacKinnon understood that the Avs probably wouldn’t catch Vegas in the conference, but “home ice in our division at least is big for us,” he told The Post.
The Avalanche achieved their goal Friday, with MacKinnon playing the starring role once again with a hat trick in a 4-3 win over the Predators in Nashville to clinch the Central Division title for the second consecutive year. Colorado (51-24-7) will face the Seattle Kraken in the first round of the playoffs, with Games 1 and 2 scheduled for Tuesday and Thursday at Ball Arena. Seattle qualified as the first wild card in the Western Conference, finishing fourth in the Pacific.
The winner of the series will take on the winner of Dallas vs. Minnesota in the second round.
The Avalanche would be the home team in that series as well, regardless of the opponent. They caught up with and passed Dallas for first place on the final day of the regular season after trailing by 14 points in the standings on Jan. 13.
This is the Avs’ 12th division championship since moving to Denver in 1995 and their third in a row. In the 2020-21 season, they won the President’s Trophy for the best record in the NHL, but in an altered division arrangement to accommodate for the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2021-22, they came out on top in the Central then won their third Stanley Cup in franchise history.
The Kraken (46-28-8) are making their first-ever playoff appearance after joining the NHL as an expansion team last season. Colorado finished 1-1-1 against them in the regular season, with all three games decided by one goal, two requiring overtime and one going to a shootout. The visiting team prevailed in every matchup.
Seattle is coached by Dave Hakstol, the former Flyers coach who resurrected the Kraken after going 27-49-6 in the franchise’s first year of existence. Center Jared McCann leads the team with 40 goals and 70 points, and defenseman Vince Dunn leads the blue line by a wide margin with 64 points. No Kraken players reached 75 points this season, but seven finished with at least 45 and 13 finished with at least 30. Jordan Eberle, Daniel Sprong, Oliver Bjorkstrand, Jaden Schwartz and Matty Beniers all have 20 or more goals, in addition to McCann.
Beniers is a candidate for the Calder Memorial Trophy for the NHL’s best rookie, and Hakstol has a case for the Jack Adams Award for the league’s coach of the year.
The Kraken also feature a couple of familiar faces. Andre Burakovsky scored an overtime game-winning goal in the Stanley Cup Final for the Avalanche last season, and he received his championship ring last October when Seattle visited Ball Arena. But the forward has been out since early February with a lower-body injury. Seattle goalie Philipp Grubauer also played three seasons with Colorado. He battled former teammate Pavel Francouz in a shootout in January, with Francouz and the Avs emerging victorious.
