The Avalanche have a GOLDEN opportunity...

The round one matchup between the Dallas Stars and the Colorado Avalanche is set and the Avs have a golden opportunity as their vibes are flying high while the Dallas Stars losing skid has hit seven games as well as some key injuries to their lineup that just happened last game against the Nashville Predators. Jason Robertson was seen leaving the arena with a brace on his right leg and he seemed to be in some discomfort as well. It's so unfortunate to see that happen to a player obviously, but at this point as the Colorado Avalanche you just play the games in front of you and right now you are looking at an injured Dallas Stars lineup. If you will remember earlier Miro Heiskanen also got injured in February and had to have knee surgery and as well they're still talking about Miro Heiskanen possibly not even playing for the entire first round. That is an absolutely insane advantage for the Colorado Avalanche. Obviously you want that stunned bias, you want players to be healthy, but that is just not how things go. Sometimes teams get advantages over others and you have to take the advantage if you want to win a Stanley Cup and game one is actually scheduled for Saturday, April 19th at 630 local Colorado time. So it's really not that far away from having this kind of matchup happening. I mean if this happened about a week ago when the Colorado Avalanche were off, you'd maybe have a bit of a more optimistic outlook, but as it stands right now, you have only two days till the Stanley Cup round one playoffs start and what a playoffs it's honestly going to be. I mean with the Colorado Avalanche, like I was saying, it's a tale of two different teams right now. The Avs are on a complete high while the Dallas Stars last 20 games, I took a screenshot of it for you guys here, has just been abysmal. I mean you can see that win streak in the middle there, but there's a big asterisk next to every single one of those games where the Stars are just getting completely outplayed in almost every game and the competition is relatively soft. There's only one team in there that was at the time in a playoff picture and that was the Calgary Flames who, while being a tough batch of team of players and respectable, they're really not a playoff team. I'm happier that the Blues made it in and you should be too for the Colorado Avalanche. I mean that helps because that's a big physical team that's going to challenge the Jets. I still think the Jets are going to win that round one series, but it's definitely going to be a lot harder than it would have been if it was against the Flames. But and then you look, I mean you can see all the games they lost in overtime before that. Then they go on a bit of a winning streak, Jake Oettinger was really the reason why they were winning a lot of these games, he was playing out of his mind. Then Jake Oettinger's play starts to dip, I mean and the forward lack of cohesion gets exposed. I mean you see the seven game losing streak. It's one thing to go into the playoffs where you're bad for your last ten. I don't care how a team plays going into their last ten if they're already a pretty good team heading into the playoffs. That just shows that everyone's trying to rest up, they're trying to save themselves for playoffs and really historically it's never mattered in the course of a situation where it goes to how a team enters the playoffs. It doesn't matter how they end the regular season. However, when you're ice cold for your last 20 games, that is a gigantic concern. That shows that the offense wasn't clicking. A lot of the time Dallas plays their offense through their defense a lot like the Avalanche do and the defense has been weak trying to get plays started. But really we saw this quote from Pete DeBoer as well on the Jason Robertson. Because the Dallas Stars were playing so badly, they were actually playing all of their guys. The Avalanche we saw were resting their guys, heading in, and they got a big four day break as well. So they had a lot of advantages to the rest. But the Dallas Stars just completely threw out the chance of resting their top guys just to try and get them invigorated because they didn't want to just head into the playoffs at this bad of a note. And unfortunately, that didn't happen with the Robertson injury. Pete DeBoer really didn't mince words. He really did call it an injury off the bat. So that's not encouraging whatsoever for Jason Robertson. We saw that he left the Bridgestone Arena with a brace on his right leg. That's horrible to see. And then let's go into the Miro Heiskanen situation as well. We got some clarification from Gene Neal, that's the GM of the Dallas Stars, on the recent Heiskanen reports. Really the words here are mincing words at best really. They're saying, oh, he was never not not expected for the first round. He won't play game one, but is hopeful for the series. That's not good. That shows that if we get into a situation where the Avs possibly by game four, so last game in Avs land, in Avs nation land in Colorado, before they head back in game five, if we're talking about maybe we rush them back for game five, because this series just isn't going well for us. What kind of Miro Heiskanen are we going to get if they try and rush him back any time in the first four games? The fact that people are saying he's doubtful to even play the series, if they try and rush him back in game two, game three, I don't think we're going to be looking at a very good Miro Heiskanen. I mean, I think that's player mismanagement at that point. He does not seem healthy and ready to play. So it's an extremely interesting thing. And a lot of guys that don't have that have knee surgery, which we are very well acquainted with here in Colorado. This is Gabe Landeskog in green, looking good. He's getting dragged down, taking contact from I think Eric Johnson, but he pushes through and still scores. This is a guy that had knee surgery a year ago and took a long time to recover. Obviously he has a very extreme type of knee surgery, but it is almost never been the case that a player can have knee surgery like Miro Heiskanen did with that bad injury. I mean, I'll show it again. I mean, I don't want to look too closely at the leg when it happens, but everything looks worse in slow motion, but it was bad. He had to get surgery on it in like late February. I don't know a single player that can have or a person that can have knee surgery and then two months later be ready to play pro sports. I mean, that's kind of a little bit unheard of. So really, I don't know what's going to happen. But here's the schedule for this upcoming Dallas series. You can see that Colorado fans, you also got to realize that Colorado is two hours behind in Eastern time. So it's not that bad. We got a bunch of 630 game for game one on Saturday and then a bunch of 730 games local time though. I mean, that kind of sucks for Dallas. I mean, 930 p.m. I mean, we're talking about 830 p.m. local time for almost all of these games and you got to remember their national game. So they're going to start like 15 to 20 minutes late. Yikes. I don't really know who's making the schedules. I honestly think they might keep like a monkey in a room and just have them click buttons like yeah, good enough. That's the schedule because I don't know what exactly they're trying to do. But don't forget game one on Saturday. Don't forget to tune in all the blackouts all the craziness with Comcast in Colorado is lifted here. So it's not hard to watch fortunately an actually good business decision by the NHL. But yeah, let's actually take a look at what I think the Stanley Cup bracket will be. This is my first Stanley Cup bracket. I really tried to do as much respect as possible in the West because I think that this Western Conference is stacked. I wasn't given any easy sweeps, any games in five. For a lot of these, I kind of just did yep in six. The only team that I didn't really respect is Minnesota. I said that they would get beaten in five. Sorry for all of you out there that's Minnesota fans. I know there's a little bit of you. But yeah, I just see that being kind of the weakest one. And I see that the Kings and Oilers actually had the Kings in six. I got the Dallas Stars and abs. I had that in six as well. I think you still got to respect the Dallas Stars and the St. Louis Blues and the Jets is six as well. Eastern Conference if you even care about that sort of thing. I did not give a lot of respect to that at all. I think that that division is soft. I think Tampa honestly has a run. I think we're going to get my prediction is we are getting a rematch of the Colorado Avalanche and the Tampa Bay Lightning in the Stanley Cup final. I think that that would be a blast as well. But also, yeah, I don't really see anyone as impressive in the East. The Leafs can't prove it in the playoffs. The Caps, I don't believe in them. And if we're talking about the Canes, they are just not strong enough, but they're strong enough to get to the Western Conference final just because of how weak the division is. And then I see Tampa absolutely taking that Western Conference final series. Honestly, this is going to be such a fun playoffs and I just can't wait for it. I can't wait to be wrong. But I mean, really, you look at the players that they're missing. Jason Robertson, their top goal scorer, and obviously a very good player in his own right. That sucks to leave. Even with Dallas Stars' depth, I don't think you can replace that. And then, of course, Nero Heiskinen. These two are invaluable to the experience of these players. And I can't wait to get Gabe Landiskog back. The Avs are going into this series fully healthy and they have a golden opportunity to for once flip the script and take advantage of an injured Dallas Stars team. Probably the best team in the West other than the Colorado Avalanche. So what do you think, Avs Nation? This is going to be such a great series in my mind. I think the Avs are going to take it. I can't wait to get started and have a good one.