It’s only been four years, but the Colorado Avalanche don’t look much like the last Avs team the Stars faced in the 2020 bubble. In fact, the only players left from that series who played against Winnipeg last round are Mikko Rantanen, Valeri Nichushkin, Nathan MacKinnon, Sam “Samuel” Girard, and Cale “Cherubic Cheeks” Makar. There are a lot of new faces, some of them old friends like Andrew Cogliano and some guy named Joel Kiviranta.
But before we start getting all nostalgic and romantic, let’s get sweaty and sardonic. After all, the Stars are facing not only their second recent Cup-winner in a row, but a team far more famous for this magnificent accomplishment:
Man, look at MacKinnon there, with his yellow bracelet and expertly perched toque. That’s someone who knows how to lead a team to glory, and definitely not someone who knows how to luck into a Cup Final against the decaying husk of the Tampa Bay Lightning after making it through the gauntlet that was, and I am not making this up, Nashville, St. Louis, and Edmonton. I’ve seen tougher preseason schedules, personally, but let’s not be too hard on this one-line team that got handed a championship because Joe Sakic threatened someone in an elevator. We’re all about respect in these parts.
Since the Stars easily bounced a depleted Avalanche team with a half-dead MacKinnon and a third-string goalie in a Game 7 overtime, the Avs decided to start fleecing teams to add actually good players to their roster—a good strategy! But the good news for all of us is that, even with some new additions, you get to channel the exact same hatred that fueled the Stars’ Cup Final runs in 1999 and 2000. You’ll probably hear people toss out something about the Avalanche having won more games against Dallas in the playoffs overall, but that relies on two mid-aughts series that actually don’t count, it turns out. (I checked with the NHL, and they’ve agreed that those series both adjoined the full-season lockout, and as such, they have been expunged from the record. I expect Google to fix this very soon!)
Anyway, enough about how the Stars have blitzed the Avs in the playoffs (seven games each time, just to exacerbate the heartbreak) whenever they’ve had anything resembling a decent team in anything resembling a legitimate NHL season. We don’t need to talk about how the Avalanche lost Peter Forsberg to Nashville, or how he fleeced the team just to play like three games before retiring right before the game after the team spent a week selling tons of tickets for his return home. This is a Great Franchise. The Stars have Pantera, but the Avs? They’ve got Imagine Dragons, baby.
Okay, okay, we try to do Serious Writing on this online web site, so let’s get down to business. Here are the Avalanche players the Stars are about to face, along with one reason you are going to get sick of them very quickly.
Get ready to hear about Nikolai Kovalenko a whole bunch, as he arrived in Colorado from the KHL just in time for the playoffs. Is the son of Andrei Kovalenko really trying to pull a Mark Stone? Well, maybe, but you’ll probably loathe him far more because you’ll hear way too much about how he was born in North Carolina but grew up in Russia. Is this something to brag about? Well, if you’ve ever been to North Carolina, yes.
But that’s not as bad as being Brandon Duhaime, who is second on the team in penalty minutes despite playing like five minutes a night. That makes sense when you see his face, however, which ranks 11 out of 10 in Punchability according to The Analytics.
Then there’s Andrew Cogliano, who is most notable for sabotaging his iron man streak by hitting Adrian Kempe and getting suspended. I mean, come on, you had Drew Doughty sitting right there, and you chose to blow the streak on Kempe? What a loser.
Joel Kiviranta, of course, scored a hat trick to eliminate the Avalanche four years ago. He has another hat trick this year, if you add up all his goals across 56 games played. This means he’s going to score a crucial fluke of a goal against Dallas in like Game 4, so just get prepared for that now.
Caleb Jones is the Avs’ seventh defenseman in this series, which means he’s still going to get more ice time than Nils Lundkvist. How dare he, I guess?
Ross Colton is basically Craig Smith for overpaying losers like the Avalanche. He’s the sort of dude that hits a vulnerable defenseman to knock him out of the game right before cross-checking someone in the face. Not that I’m generalizing or anything.
Yakov Trenin has fought Zdeno Chara multiple times in his career, presumably to impress his big brother’s cool friends or something. How has that gone for him? Well,
Miles Wood is really fast and really annoying, and you’re going to find yourself screaming at Esa Lindell for not keeping up with him at some point. No one has the right to make anyone scream at Esa Lindell, least of all someone named after a video game fox.
EDIT: Also, this:
Jack Johnson is still in the NHL, presumably because Sean Walker is carrying his partner like Pacha in The Emperor’s New Groove.
Zach Parise was one of the better U.S. players, once upon a time. He also captained the 2014 U.S. team that got shut out by Canada in the semi-finals before also getting shut out by Russia in the bronze medal game. Thanks for sabotaging our country, Zach.
Casey Mittelstadt is a former Buffalo Sabre, which means he is legally obligated to complain about Brett Hull’s skate like some petulant barfly trying to parse an offside review. He also led the 2018 USA World Juniors team to a bronze medal, which automatically makes him a better citizen than Zach Parise.
Sean Walker managed to get himself traded twice in two years. He also went to Our Lady of the Lake Catholic Academy, which just makes me think of this:
Josh Manson is best known for being fined after making a throat-slashing gesture at Nazem Kadri. Everyone knows this gesture is reserved for telling your bartender to close you out when it’s loud so you don’t have to shout at them, making Josh Manson a totally dork.
Artturi Lehkonen is exactly the sort of player who scores five goals in a series despite not playing on the top line. I’m sick of him already, and you are all going to hate him by Saturday, I promise.
Samuel Girard (who will always be “Sam” to me) is the proof of concept for smallish defensemen who aren’t superstars. He’s the spiritual successor to Alex Goligoski, and he’s also the reason we keep thinking players like Nils Lundkvist are just this close to putting it all together. Stop stringing us along, Sam!
Valeri Nichushkin is a former Dallas Stars first-round draft pick. I bet you won’t hear that mentioned this series, but just in case you already knew that, let’s take a gander at Nichushkin’s true highlight reel during his time in Dallas:
Mikko Rantanen spends entire weeks hibernating in his cave, letting MacKinnon and Makar do all the work, only to re-emerge the moment a wounded animal wanders across his acreage. If you’re looking for the poacher of the group who wouldn’t make nearly as much money with Nathan MacKinnon feeding him pucks, look no further. You’ll be hoping he takes every shot of the series, only for him to score a deflection goal by accident at the worst possible time. Let the hate flow through you.
Nathan MacKinnon is weird, man. Sure, he’s a terrifying force of nature who seems to make the entire ice rink roll under his skates like he’s Thanos on a treadmill, but he’s also a total dork about eating carbs, as we found out from Nikita Zadorov in a post-trade interview. That led Nathan MacKinnon to unleash upon the world the most insane statement someone can ever say: “I’m not crazy.”
Devon Toews is a real nitwit for letting the Islanders give him away to Colorado for nothing, just because he dared to go to arbitration with Lou Lamoriello. Why did you do this to the hockey world, Devon? Didn’t you know that Cale Makar was supposed to draw the ire of Avs fans for years despite being partnered with inferior teammates? Didn’t you know his destiny had already been written before you decided to up and change that? Oh, also I played baseball when I was in sixth grade with a guy named Devon, and one time he hit what he thought was a home run that had actually short-hopped the chain-link fence in the outfield. The other team managed to throw it back into the infield and tag him out as he was trotting around second base, and he lost his mind. I can still hear his voice breaking now. All Devons are idiots.
Cale Makar makes John Buccigross spill his drink every time he touches the puck, and it has ruined more than one game for me. Also, he was drafted right after Miro Heiskanen, so that means we’re all legally obligated to analyze those two players side-by-side for the rest of time. How exhausting. Why did Makar do this to us? And why do his cheeks turn an iridescent red before he steps on the ice?
Alexandar Georgiev gave up more goals to Winnipeg (Winnipeg!) in five games than Jake Oettinger surrendered to Vegas in seven. He didn’t even put up a .900 Sv% in the regular season, which means Jake Oettinger has been superior to him all year long. I’m going to lose my mind the moment someone tries to say he’s Actually Good, so let’s just all get preemptively angry now and save ourselves the trouble.
Stars Thoughts: Robert Tiffin's attempt to understand the Dallas Stars and everything else 
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