Avalanche collapse isn't the Presidents' Trophy curse -- it's a reality of today's Stanley Cup Playoffs

Evidence for the alleged curse is piling up, but it's simply the result of parity manufactured by the NHL

May 27, 2026 at 11:44 am ET • 4 min read

If you aren't a believer in the Presidents' Trophy curse, the story of the 2025-26 Colorado Avalanche might be able to convert you.

From the moment the puck hit the ice on opening night, the Avalanche went wire to wire as the NHL's best team. They piled up 55 wins, and their plus-99 goal differential was almost double the next best number. Colorado's two biggest superstars -- Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar -- were named finalists for the Hart Trophy and Norris Trophy, respectively.

If any team was going to buck the trend of playoff failures for Presidents' Trophy winners, it was this one. Through the first two rounds, Colorado was on track to do just that. The Avs went a combined 8-1 against the Los Angeles Kings and Minnesota Wild, but they wouldn't win another game after that.

In the Avalanche's series-clinching win over the Wild in Game 5, Makar suffered an upper-body injury on a rather innocuous collision with 5-foot-8 and 181-pound Mats Zuccarello.

Makar missed Games 1 and 2 of the Western Conference Final against the Vegas Golden Knights, both losses on home ice. In Game 3, Makar returned, but MacKinnon went down with a debilitating injury in the second period after blocking a shot with the side of his knee. MacKinnon played in Game 4, but without any burst in his skating, he was a shell of himself.

Colorado's season ended with a sweep at the hands of the Golden Knights -- a team that won 39 games in the regular season and would've missed the playoffs entirely in the Eastern Conference.

The Avalanche's failure is the latest in a long line of Presidents' Trophy winners that have come up short of hockey's ultimate prize. Since the 2004-05 lockout, just two teams have won the Presidents' Trophy and Stanley Cup in the same season, and the latest was the Chicago Blackhawks back in 2012-13.

In fact, Colorado suffered a better fate than most Presidents' Trophy winners of the last 21 seasons, most of which bowed out in the first two rounds of the playoffs.

For those who want to believe in a curse, evidence just keeps piling up year after year. When postseason heartbreak strikes, an unseen mystical or supernatural force may be an easier pill to swallow than the reality: It's never been harder to win the Stanley Cup.

Curse or manufactured parity?

The Presidents' Trophy was first handed out to the team with the best regular-season record in 1986. In the first 19 seasons of the award's existence, six of its winners also won the Stanley Cup, including three of the last six prior to the 2004-05 lockout.

The sudden change in the fortunes of the Presidents' Trophy winners following the lockout was a feature, not a bug. The NHL instituted a hard salary cap in 2005-06, which achieved the goal of creating parity as the talent gap between playoff-caliber teams has shrunk drastically.

Prior to the salary cap, if a team had the money, it could keep its core together as long as it desired. That allowed the New York Islanders and the Edmonton Oilers to build dynasties in the 1980s. It also allowed the Avalanche, New Jersey Devils and Detroit Red Wings to take turns lifting the Cup from 1995-2003, with the Dallas Stars providing the only changeup in 1999.

After the lockout, success came with a real physical and financial toll, and that gave the NHL's middle class a fighting chance. Now, the draw of the Stanley Cup Playoffs is that anything can happen, and it often does. Two-thirds of the Presidents' Trophy winners since 2005-06 have been eliminated before the conference finals.

So, what are the very top teams in the NHL to do if they're on track to finish with the best regular-season record?

Should the Avalanche have lost four more games down the stretch to hand the Presidents' Trophy to the Carolina Hurricanes in order to avoid the alleged curse? If they did, would Makar and MacKinnon have avoided injury? Would Martin Necas have scored more than one goal in the postseason? Would Mackenzie Blackwood and Scott Wedgewood have made one or two more critical saves against the Golden Knights?

Those questions, of course, are all rhetorical. The Avalanche did almost everything correctly in pursuit of a Stanley Cup, but they ran into another elite team that made all the right roster-building moves and got hot goaltending at the right time of year.

Colorado did what any team with two of the top 10 players in the world should do. It went all-in on upgrading its roster as much as possible under the constraints of a hard salary cap, and for 91 games, it got rewarded for doing so. In the Western Conference Final, poorly-timed injuries caused the offense to go cold against one of the best defensive teams in the NHL, and the Avs' season met a swift end.

Going into 2026-27, the Avalanche shouldn't change their approach. They'll have to make some tweaks to the roster, but I would expect them to keep taking big swings in pursuit of the franchise's fourth Stanley Cup, and they certainly shouldn't fear the Presidents' Trophy or its mythical curse.