What’s nagging Colorado Avalanche against playoff teams recently?

Once the Avalanche had faltered early and needed to scramble back Wednesday, it became clear what might nag this team in the playoffs.

Fans felt the sinking feeling in their stomachs whenever Nathan MacKinnon’s line skated to the bench for a change.

Who’s going to score when the top group isn’t on the ice?

That was the feeling of helpless inevitability as the Avs attempted to claw back from down 3-1 in the third period of an eventual 4-2 loss to the Wild. And with the playoffs less than three weeks away, it’s what separates this Avalanche team from last year’s Stanley Cup-winning buzzsaw.

The Avs (44-24-6) finished the month of March with a 10-5-1 record, continuing their upward momentum in the West that started in mid-January, but only 1-5-1 against teams that would make the NHL playoffs if the season ended today. (Against the same opponents in February, they went 4-1-2.)

During those seven matchups, Colorado averaged 2.43 goals (1.86 at even strength) per game while averaging 4.78 goals against non-playoff teams. Colorado’s only March win against a playoff opponent was a tense defensive standoff in Toronto that lasted until a shootout, with no goals after the first period.

At their best this season, the Avs’ strength has been their unyielding defensive game. It’s not the same as yesteryear, when they could outscore you no matter how many goals they coughed up, no matter how many pucks they turned over or passing lanes they allowed with bad defensive gaps. The Avalanche’s first through fourth lines all were superior in their matchups.

How about now? After Artturi Lehkonen’s injury in Montreal, Jared Bednar rearranged his lines with Mikko Rantanen and MacKinnon back together. Soon, Valeri Nichushkin joined those two, forming a loaded top line with no serious, consistent scoring weapons among the bottom nine forwards.

What happens when teams do everything they can to focus on containing one line? In those seven telling March games, MacKinnon, Rantanen, Cale Makar and Nichushkin were fairly limited, combining for 16 points. Manage them, and the rest takes care of itself: The Avs managed only seven goals during those games that weren’t scored or assisted by any of those four.

Minnesota’s excellent defense kept the quartet in check, limiting all of them to zero points, and lived with the results: two Avalanche goals, one on a fortunate breakaway out of the penalty box.

“Different team last year. Deeper team,” Bednar said when asked what’s making the best opponents more strenuous lately. “Cooking with gas the whole year (last season). We’re not right now. They’re good teams.”

The argument to be made in support of Colorado’s depth is that Lehkonen will be back in the playoffs. Maybe Gabriel Landeskog eventually, too, if the Avs are lucky. But at this point in the season, to argue that in a vacuum would be to ignore everything that has happened so far, not to mention the identity of playoff hockey.

Colorado has not been fully healthy all season, and injuries are unavoidable even for the lucky teams in the grind-it-out postseason. When preparing to make a deep run, teams have to account for the reality that they will lose players along the way. It happened to the Avalanche last season, from Sam Girard to Darcy Kuemper to Nazem Kadri.

Kadri is still the gaping hole at the (second line) center of the roster. J.T. Compher fills that hole adequately as an all-purpose player, but his offensive game isn’t the same as Kadri’s. It’s why Bednar hinted the week of the trade deadline that while he likes Compher at 2C, he would love even more to have Compher at 3C.

In 15 games since the deadline passed without a big trade, Compher has seven points (three goals). He totaled three points in the seven March games against playoff teams. He hasn’t had Rantanen or Nichushkin or Lehkonen as a linemate lately.

Bednar’s conundrum is to optimize his lineup under any circumstance. It’s a domino effect. Injury occurs. Bednar makes an adjustment to bolster the top of the lineup for scoring purposes. Remainder of the lineup is weakened as a result. Opponents go all-out to stop the Big Three (or four).

It’s difficult to know when to panic with the Avalanche. They ended the regular season on a 1-5-1 slump in 2022. (Sound familiar?) This year’s team is still a playoff lock with three superstars and division title aspirations in the final stretch.

But a month removed from the deadline, the growing sample size of hockey indicates that once more adversity inevitably strikes in the playoffs, Colorado’s solution won’t be as simple as plugging in the next guy.

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