Presidents’ Trophy doesn’t doom contenders, but Colorado’s Vegas sweep showed how fast a Cup run can swing

The 2025-26 Colorado Avalanche entered the Stanley Cup Playoffs as the Presidents’ Trophy winners, and their spring ended quickly once the scoring stopped behaving. Colorado was eliminated by the Vegas Golden Knights in a 2-1 loss in Game 4 of the Western Conference Final at T-Mobile Arena, completing a Golden Knights sweep of the series.

In regular season terms, the Avalanche were exactly what the Presidents’ Trophy is supposed to reward. They finished 55-16-11 and won the award as the NHL’s top team, then swept the Los Angeles Kings in the first round and followed with a five-game second-round win over the Minnesota Wild to reach the conference final.

But the playoffs are less forgiving than a standings sheet. According to, Colorado scored seven goals in four games against Vegas, with only four coming from its top-six forwards, and its power play also fell short after earlier success. The Avalanche converted 17.1% of their regular-season power-play chances, ranked 27th in the league, and after a rebound against Minnesota in the second round, managed just one power-play goal in 10 tries versus the Golden Knights.

The Golden Knights did not have to outscore Colorado in volume. Instead, pointed to a chain of factors that snowballed once the series moved into Game-to-Game hockey. Cale Makar missed the first two games of the conference final with an upper-body injury and, once back, his impact was described as blunted; the same report also cited that forward Martin Necas missed Game 4 with a lower-body injury. It was also a goaltending and save-rate story at the wrong time for Colorado, with noting Scott Wedgewood allowed nine goals on 73 shots in the series (an.877 save percentage) and that Colorado’s comeback chances never fully clicked.

Still, the larger debate that follows every Presidents’ Trophy winner remained center stage. CBS Sports framed the Avalanche’s collapse as evidence against a literal “curse,” arguing that what looks like supernatural punishment is better explained by parity and the realities of a hard-salary-cap era. CBS also highlighted that, since the 2004-05 lockout, only two teams have won both the Presidents’ Trophy and the Stanley Cup in the same season, with Chicago’s 2012-13 team the most recent example, and that most recent Presidents’ Trophy winners have generally fallen short before the conference finals.

For Colorado, the takeaway is not that topping the league is a trap. It is that elite teams can lose quickly when top lines go quiet and key roles do not produce at full strength, even with home-ice and years of roster building behind them. The next question is what the Avalanche change, not whether they fear the regular-season title they already earned. With Vegas now set to play for the Cup, Colorado’s offseason watch will be on how it restores offensive consistency, especially on special teams, and how it manages health and matchups that can flatten a team’s momentum in a best-of-seven.