With Cale Makar suspended, are the Avalanche in trouble?

Cale Makar made the Colorado Avalanche’s list of absences longer when he took a late run at Seattle Kraken forward (and leading scorer) Jared McCann and was suspended for it. 

McCann is out of Game 5 injured, but Makar’s suspension couples with Valeri Nichushkin’s personal leave and Seattle’s momentum to put the defending champs on their heels. 

On Thursday’s edition of Daily Faceoff Live, hosts Frank Seravalli and Colby Cohen discussed whether the Avalanche can cope with their recent misfortunes.

Frank Seravalli: Let’s talk about the Seattle Kraken and the Colorado Avalanche. This has been one of the surprise series of the playoffs to this point. The Kraken have shown gumption to get in the face of the Avs basically the entire series. They’re all square with a potentially pivotal Game 5. What do you think of the Kraken and what they’ve done in the series? Do you look at the Avalanche any differently now that they are missing Cale Makar due to a one-game suspension and Valeri Nichushkin has left the team for personal reasons?

Colby Cohen: Yeah, Frank, you have to look at it differently, because you’re talking about Cale Makar here. Obviously Nichushkin is important, but they can make up for missing him. When you’re missing Cale Makar you have to look at the roster differently. Still, I don’t think they lose Game 5 on home ice and I’ll tell you why. 

You’ve still got Devon Toews, Bowen Byram, Girard, Josh Manson. You still have a group of guys who have been there and done that, and they’re going to look at this as an opportunity to step up their game with a star player out. That sometimes is a rally call for an NHL team when you lose a guy like Makar. Up front, Rantanen is scoring goals at will. MacKinnon can still take over a game at any point; he’s got six points already in the series. 

The Ball Arena is going to be rocking. The Colorado fans really come out in droves, and they are loud and on top of you in Denver. I just don’t see Seattle getting through this series.

Frank Seravalli: I actually look at the Kraken more differently than I do the Avs. Jared McCann was their leading scorer by such a wide margin this year — he scored 40 goals to 24 in second-place- and was also their points leader this year. The Avs showed for almost a quarter of this season that they can play without Cale Makar and survive. I don’t know that Seattle has proven that they can deal with a loss of that magnitude. That injury furthers the gap between these two teams in depth on paper, but this series has shown that paper gets thrown away in the playoffs.

Seattle has been stout in every way, they have gotten better goaltending from Philipp Grubauer, and they have scored first in every game. The Avalanche better take care of business while they can; they do not want to be trailing 3-2 when they visit Climate Pledge Arena again.

You can watch the entire episode here…