NHL
NHL Regular
Season
With a 19-1-6 record, there's been plenty for the Avalanche to celebrate this season. Matthew Stockman / Getty Images
It’s been an incredible, charmed beginning to the 2025-26 season for the Colorado Avalanche.
Their record — which improved to 19-1-6 with a 3-1 win over the Vancouver Canucks on Tuesday — looks like something out of a Chel game when the difficulty slider is set too low. They haven’t just been winning a lot of games, either. They’ve been blowing out good teams all season, including Saturday’s 7-2 win over the Montreal Canadiens and last month’s 9-1 trouncing of the Edmonton Oilers, the Western Conference finalist the last two seasons.
Advertisement
After 26 games, the Avs are now on pace to become only the fifth NHL team to get to the 60-win mark, and for what would be an NHL record 139 points. They’re also only the second team in NHL history to make it this deep with only one regulation loss to start a season, joining the 1979-80 Philadelphia Flyers team that started 18-1-7.
Colorado also seems to be getting stronger as the season goes along, as it currently rides a 14-0-2 hot streak that has included six wins in which it has pumped six goals or more past beleaguered opponents.
And the Avalanche have been earning respect around the league night after night for how complete and dominant a game they’re playing.
“I mean, we got waxed,” San Jose Sharks star Macklin Celebrini lamented after losing 6-0 to the Avs in Denver last week. “They’re a great hockey team … Obviously, they’re the best team in the league, and they have one regulation loss this year.”
To put the Avalanche’s red-hot start to the season in a better historical context, we’ve put together a compilation of three lists that highlight just how special what they’re doing is.
It can be hard to compare eras in the NHL, what with overtime coming back in 1983-84, the overtime loss point being added in 1999-00 and the shootout introduced in 2005-06.
Even in that context, however, what the Avs have done is special, as they've become just the fifth team in league history to have this many points this early in a season.
Colorado is in some very good company on this list, too, including two of the most dominant Stanley Cup-winning teams of the 2000s: the Hall of Famer-loaded 2002 Detroit Red Wings and the juggernaut 2013 Chicago Blackhawks team that, in that lockout-shortened season, won the middle of its three championships in six years.
The other two Cup-winning teams on this list include the 1984 Oilers and 1944 Canadiens.
Advertisement
That 2022-23 Boston Bruins team, meanwhile, basically didn't stop winning after its hot start, eventually putting up a 65-12-5 record to set the all-time points record (135). The Bruins serve as somewhat of a cautionary tale, however, as they lost to the Florida Panthers in the first round that season.
Perhaps the most impressive thing about these Avs is that they've achieved this record in a season when the rest of the league is all lumped together in a massive, parity-filled middle of the pack. Even the second-place team in the NHL this season, the Dallas Stars, is on pace to finish 21 points back of Colorado at this point, and they haven't been nearly as strong offensively or defensively.
Which brings us to ...
If you don't find the 44 points in 26 games argument convincing enough, perhaps going a step further into team goal differential will help.
With 106 goals for and 53 against, the Avalanche have posted a remarkable plus-53 goal differential, which is the 11th-best mark through 26 games in NHL history. Colorado is averaging a heady 4.08 goals per game and only 2.04 goals against per game, ranking first in the league by quite a bit in both categories.
An NHL team hasn't led in both categories in a full season since the dynasty Canadiens teams of the 1970s, which made two appearances on this list.
The biggest driver of the Avs' two-way dominance this season has been the play of Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar, who we currently have as the co-front-runners for the Hart Trophy this season. MacKinnon is on pace for 69 goals and 145 points to lead the NHL as part of what looks to be a career-defining season. Makar, meanwhile, leads all defensemen with a 101-point pace that would rank among the top scoring seasons ever for a defenseman and make him the second blueliner to break the century mark in the last 34 years.
Advertisement
So, yes, special stuff.
The addition of Brock Nelson — a Selke Trophy candidate in the early going — at last season's trade deadline, and an outstanding start for netminder Scott Wedgewood, have also been two big boosts to the Avs this season.
Even taking into account everything we've written above, the most remarkable part of the Avs' extraordinary season so far is probably the fact that they've picked up a point in 25 of their 26 games.
Without its six overtime or shootout loss points, Colorado would "only" be on pace for 120 points, which is more in line with what we've witnessed from Presidents' Trophy-winning clubs in the past. But one thing the Avs have done exceptionally well this season is hang in every game, something that teams get rewarded handsomely for in the NHL's OTL era.
Even its one regulation loss — way back on Oct. 25 — was a very close game: a 3-2 game in Boston, where Colorado heavily carried the play and owned the shot clock but couldn't break through against goaltender Jeremy Swayman.
Losing only once in regulation in 26 games in the NHL is exceptionally rare. The table above includes all 14 teams that have done it in a season, regardless of whether it happened at the start of the year.
Only two other teams have gone this near-perfect for that long a stretch since way back in 1982, and both of them won the Stanley Cup that season: the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2004 and the Avs in 2022. The 1970s Canadiens teams also make a couple more appearances here, as do Bobby Orr's Bruins, who were incredibly hot in the second half that 1971-72 season en route to winning their second championship in three seasons.
It will be interesting to see how long the Avs can keep this streak going. That unique 1979-80 Flyers team somehow lasted until game 37 with only one regulation loss, putting up a 26-1-10 record in the pre-overtime era when teams could frequently rack up ties.
Advertisement
Keeping this up another month may be difficult for Colorado. The Avs are riding high shooting and save percentages right now, with the highest PDO in the league, which suggests at some point they're in for some more adversity.
Even so, it's safe to say they've already laid claim to the Stanley Cup front-runner this season — and put themselves in some very good historical company only two months into the season.
Spot the pattern. Connect the terms
Find the hidden link between sports terms
Play today's puzzle
James Mirtle is a senior writer covering the NHL for The Athletic. James joined The Athletic as the inaugural editor in Canada in 2016 and served as senior managing editor of The Athletic NHL for four years. Previously, he spent 12 years as a sportswriter with The Globe and Mail. A native of Kamloops, B.C., he appears regularly on Sportsnet 590 The Fan and other radio stations across Canada. Follow James on Twitter @mirtle
Hockey News