Series Preview: Colorado vs. St. Louis in First Round

After winning the Presidents' Trophy as the team with the best regular-season record in 2020-21, the Colorado Avalanche is set to face the St. Louis Blues in the first round of the postseason. The clubs will take the ice for Game 1 of the best-of-seven series on Monday at Ball Arena.
Colorado posted a 39-13-4 record in the 56-game season, going 8-2-0 in the final 10 outings of the campaign to pick up the franchise's third Presidents' Trophy and 12th division title (10th since 1995-96). The Avalanche went 16-0-1 in its last 17 contests at Ball Arena, the longest home point streak by any team this season, and its 22 home wins on the year were tied for the most in the league.
The Blues also finished the campaign strong, going 8-1-3 since April 24 to wrap up the regular season with a 27-20-9 mark and 63 points. They had the sixth-best power play in the league, converting on 23.2 percent of their chances, and the third-best man-advantage success rate on the road, scoring 24.6 percent of the time. Away from Enterprise Center, St. Louis went 15-9-4, tied for the 10th-most road wins in the league.

The Avs went 5-3-0 in the regular season against the Blues, winning five in a row in the middle of the eight matchups.
After falling 4-1 in the opening-night meeting at Ball Arena on Jan. 13, Colorado responded with an 8-0 victory two days later. The Avalanche picked up one-goal wins in the next three contests as well, but the Blues closed out the series with two victories at home on April 24-26.
"Everything is sort of coming together for them at this point. Depth scoring, special teams have been outstanding, the power play was good all year but has really taken off in the last 13 games or more," head coach Jared Bednar said of the Blues. "[Their] penalty kill has stepped up, their goaltending is better down the stretch, they're getting guys healthy. Remember this is a team that has had a significant amount of injuries to key players throughout the course of the season, so their numbers, maybe the wins and losses, weren't as good as what people expected, but now they're getting healthy and it looks like they have a full lineup and they're a tough team… It's an experienced group and they play hard, they got skill, I mean they're deep and this is a real good hockey team and we're preparing for that."

In the season series, Colorado averaged 3.25 goals for and 2.63 goals against and found the back of the net on 34.2 percent of its power plays, recording at least one man-advantage goal in seven of the eight meetings--with five coming in the 8-0 win on Jan. 15. The Avalanche also netted a 79.3-percent success rate on the penalty kill, going 23-for-29.
Nathan MacKinnon skated in all eight outings against the Blues and posted 14 points (six goals, eight assists), tied for his most against a single opponent this year. Cale Makar, Gabriel Landeskog and Andre Burakovsky also averaged over a point per game. Makar finished with 10 points (two goals, eight assists) versus the division foe, including the game-winner in the final minute of regulation on April 3, while Landeskog (three goals, six assists) and Burakovsky (four goals, five assists) each had nine points in the matchups.
Philipp Grubauer and Devan Dubnyk each played in three of the eight contests and both goaltenders went 2-1-0. Jonas Johansson also played against St. Louis twice, and he split those games.
The Blues were led offensively by Ryan O'Reilly and David Perron against Colorado as each forward had seven points in the series. Mike Hoffman had six points in the matchups, with four of those coming on the power play. Hoffman and O'Reilly tied for the team lead with four goals each against the Avs. Goaltender Jordan Binnington played in seven of the eight games and went 3-4-0 with a .909 save percentage and 2.89 goals-against average.
Colorado has qualified for the playoffs in each of the last four seasons while St. Louis is in the postseason for the third straight year. The Blues failed to reach the 2018 postseason after dropping a winner-advances final game of 2017-18 to the Avalanche, but they came back to win the Stanley Cup in 2019. St. Louis fell in six games to the Vancouver Canucks in the first round of the 2020 playoffs.
The Avs and Blues have only met in a series once in the postseason, back in 2001 when Colorado defeated St. Louis 4-1 in five games during the Western Conference Final. The rivals also met last year in the round-robin play of the Stanley Cup Qualifiers, a game that the Avalanche won 2-1 after Nazem Kadri scored the game-winner with 0.1 seconds left in regulation.
The squads will open the series on Monday night at Ball Arena with puck drop set for 8 p.m. MT. The Avs also host the Blues on Wednesday at 8:30 p.m. MT in Game 2 before the series shifts to St. Louis for Games 3-4, which are set for Friday, May 21 at 7:30 p.m. MT and Sunday, May 23 with a game time still to be determined.
If necessary, Colorado will take on St. Louis at Ball Arena for Games 5 and 7 on Tuesday, May 25 and Saturday, May 29, respectively. The Blues will host a possible Game 6 at Enterprise Center on Thursday, May 27. Start times and broadcast coverage for Games 5-7 will be announced at a later time.