Avalanche trail – After the Colorado Avalanche dropped the first three games of the series to Vegas and blew a 3-0 lead in Game 3, coach Jared Bednar framed Game 4 as Colorado’s toughest test. Defenseman Cale Makar is playing through an upper-body injury, while Nathan MacKinnon
The Avalanche walked into Game 4 already staring at a familiar, uncomfortable number: three straight losses to Vegas, trailing 3-0 in the series entering the next game. For a team that didn’t lose three consecutive games in regulation during the regular season, it wasn’t supposed to look like this.
Then Sunday’s collapse made it harder to ignore. In Game 3, Colorado blew a 3-0 lead, giving up three goals in the second period and two more in the third. Vegas won 5-3.
Colorado coach Jared Bednar didn’t dress it up. When he talked on Tuesday, he focused less on what happened and more on what has to change. “I think our team’s played with more intensity and more desperation as the series has gone on and it hasn’t worked out for us yet. ” Bednar said. “The hill to climb, it’s definitely a tough one. It just doesn’t happen very often and we’re certainly understanding of that. But I think we have a lot of pride and a lot of character in our room. and we displayed that time over time throughout the course of the year.
“This will be our most difficult challenge, but I believe we will show up and we will be ready to play, ready to compete for a win tomorrow night.”
Bednar’s message carried a clear edge: intensity alone hasn’t flipped the outcome yet, and the margin between keeping the lead and losing it has been painfully thin.
The task doesn’t get easier with injuries. Bednar said Tuesday that defenseman Cale Makar appears to be playing through an upper-body injury. Forward Nathan MacKinnon sustained a leg injury after blocking a shot in Game 3 and played sparingly for the remainder of Sunday’s game. Even with that, Bednar said MacKinnon would be in the lineup for Game 4.
Makar missed the first two games of the series before returning for Game 3, leaving Colorado with a roster already tested by the pace of the matchup.
Vegas, for its part, has turned those moments into results. In Game 1, the Golden Knights won 4-2 after building a 3-0 lead and sealing the game with an empty-net goal. In Game 2, Vegas scored two goals in a span of 2:07 in the third period to erase a 1-0 Colorado deficit, going on to win 3-1.
Bednar pointed to the overall shape of the matchup without pretending it’s random. “It’s very evenly matched and the games have shown that. They’ve come out on top of three of them,” he said. “Certainly, would love it only to be two, especially after last night, building a three-goal lead. But we are where we are now. and we know how fine the margins are. and we have to keep trying to exploit them and trying to make one more play than we have in the previous games. both on the offensive side and on the defensive side. to win a hockey game. When you look at it from that perspective, I think it becomes a lot more realistic.”.
Now the Avalanche face the simplest kind of urgency: tomorrow night, they need to win. Not just to stop the bleeding, but to prove that the collapse in Game 3 wasn’t the moment the series turned for good.
Colorado Avalanche Vegas Golden Knights Game 4 Jared Bednar Nathan MacKinnon Cale Makar NHL playoffs 3-0 series deficit