Grading The Week: Avalanche need to avoid first-round dogfight vs. Dallas, Quinn Hughes in Stanley Cup Playoffs

Confession time The puck heads on the Grading The Week GTW staff have presumably called the Presidents Trophy worse things than any of your relatives have called any of the last five U S presidents And we d like to take all of it back Well majority of it Because it s looking like the Avalanche might need you Mr Presidents Trophy Not so much because Avs GM Chris MacFarland has to prove to the free world that he built the NHL s best regular-season association in - Although he has Oh no The Avs need to do whatever it takes to nail down the No seed in the Western Conference For home ice Sure That works too But really it s more about making sure you re matched up in the first round with a Wild Card gang not opening up in the same slot as last spring s Stanley Cup run And not paired up with one the other two contenders in a stupidly tough Central division right now As of early Saturday morning Colorado led all of the NHL with points The No club in the league Dallas right behind the burgundy and blue with points The division s No unit Minnesota woke up Saturday with points Oh and the Wild also just traded for defenseman Quinn Hughes arguably the best offensive D-man in the league after Cale Makar Side note Among the pieces shipped from Minnesota to Vancouver was a familiar and beloved name to local ice aficionados ex-DU defenseman Zeev Buium Avs pursuit of No seed A So anyway let s check the math Remember how that first-round seven-game series loss with Dallas played out last spring How everyone revealed it should ve been a Western Conference final Yeah well it wasn t And it would seriously behoove the Avalanche to avoid a similar second-place-vs -third-place pairing in the opening round of the postseason Basically Keep it up fellas From Dec - the Avs went - - and put six goals past the Panthers Just win baby Because the top of the Central is only going to be an absolute dogfight NHL com keeps a rolling if-the-season-ended-today Stanley Cup bracket going through the regular season As of late Friday night the Avs were holding the seed and paired up with San Jose as the worst of the two wild cards It also had the Stars and Wild locking horns in one of those Central vs Central bloodbaths Let s not go there again Rockies take Pill look younger C Band GTW is perfectly cool with the Rockies flushing whatever and whomever they can as far as coaches teachers ideas from We re very cool with poaching anyone and everyone from the Dodgers organization When in doubt steal from the best Related Articles Keeler When Colorado wrestling company suffered crash in Lakewood three towns opened hearts wallets The population is special Keeler Broncos remind ex-Denver RB C J Anderson of Super Bowl champs right down to disrespect Renck vs Keeler Is Broncos underdog status at home vs Packers ultimate sign of disrespect Keeler Think Broncos are NFL playoff frauds Not when Sean Payton calls meeting like he did vs Raiders Grading The Week Deion Sanders hire of Brennan Marion as CU Buffs OC reminds us of Sean Lewis That s a good thing Besides having more L A blue higher up the food chain what s enthralling about the new swatch of coaching managerial hires is their respective ages Basically the guys in charge on the field are going from old Gen X young Baby Boomer to very very Millennial Skipper Warren Schaeffer will be on Opening Day New pitching coach Alon Leichman will be New hitting coach Brett Pill will be New bullpen coach Matt Buschmann will be Average age As of April of last season the average age of the Rockies manager hitting coach pitching coach and bullpen coach was years old That s a drop of years If the Rockies improve in by that exact number of victories that s um still only wins But it would also be the first season-over-season improvement for this franchise since win percentage and so hey There s that Want more sports news Sign up for the Sports Omelette to get all our analysis on Denver s teams