The Colorado Avalanche Are On A Historic Pace In 2025-26 NHL Season

Colorado Avalanche captain Gabriel Landeskog celebrates after Nathan MacKinnon scores on Dec. 2, 2025. (Photo by Matthew Stockman/Getty Images)

Getty Images

Just three years after the Boston Bruins set a new benchmark with 135 points in an NHL regular season, the Colorado Avalanche are on pace to break that record.

After cruising to a 3-1 home win over the Vancouver Canucks on Tuesday at Ball Arena, the Avalanche improved to 19-1-6 in the 2025-26 season. With nearly one-third of their games played, Colorado has a three-point lead over the second place Dallas Stars in the NHL standings, despite playing two fewer games, and an .846 points percentage.

The Bruins’ record of 65-12-5 gave them a .823 points percentage in 2022-23. The all-time mark is still held by the 1976-77 Montreal Canadians. Amid a run of four straight Stanley Cups, they went 60-8-12 for .825 in the era before overtime, when there were still ties.

While the Avalanche have been one of the NHL’s elite teams in recent years, they’ve won just one playoff round since their Stanley Cup championship in 2022. Their regular-season point totals have also dropped from 119 points in their Cup year to 109 points in 2022-23, 107 in 2023-24 and 102 in 2024-25.

Of course, Colorado was also missing captain Gabriel Landeskog for those three seasons. Now, at age 33, he’s back. After a long and grueling rehabilitation of a serious knee issue, the 2012 rookie of the year returned for the playoffs last spring and has played every game so far this season. Month by month, his ice time is trending upward. Now playing on the first power-play unit and a dangerous second line with Ross Colton and Brock Nelson, Landeskog’s starting to find the score sheet, too, with seven points in his last four games.

As Landeskog’s line heats up, that presents another matchup nightmare for opposing coaches. When facing Colorado, they already have to worry about the NHL’s top scorer, Nathan MacKinnon, and the top-scoring defenseman, Cale Makar.

Both players are building off of the high standards they’ve already set for themselves in their careers. MacKinnon, 30, won both the Hart and Ted Lindsay Awards as the NHL’s best player when he put up 51 goals and 140 points in 2023-24. This season, he’s leading the league with 22 goals and 46 points through 26 games — two goals ahead of second-place breakout star Morgan Geekie of the Boston Bruins and six points ahead of surging sophomore Macklin Celebrini of the San Jose Sharks.

If MacKinnon can maintain this pace, he’ll hit new highs of 69 goals and 145 points by season’s end.

As for Makar, the 27-year-old who was named playoff MVP during Colorado’s 2022 Cup run is the front-runner to take home his third Norris Trophy as the league’s best defenseman. His 32 points put him on pace to hit 100 for the first time in his career and are six more than second-place Zach Werenski of the Columbus Blue Jackets and the now-injured Adam Fox of the New York Rangers, although his nine goals put him one behind the leader among defensemen, Jakob Chychrun of the Washington Capitals.

Though scoring league-wide has dipped slightly from the average of 3.14 goals per game that we saw in the 2022-23 season, the Avalanche are running and gunning at a level that has rarely been seen in this millennium. Averaging 4.08 goals through their first 26 games, that number trails only the 2021-22 Presidents’ Trophy-winning Florida Panthers (4.11).

But the Avalanche have not built their record through scoring alone. After general manager Chris MacFarland re-vamped his goaltending by trading for Scott Wedgewood and Mackenzie Blackwood over a nine-day span almost exactly one year ago, Colorado has allowed a league-low 2.04 goals against so far this season — sixth-best since the 2000-01 season and the lowest since the Cup-winning 2012-13 Chicago Blackhawks (2.02).

A 33-year-old journeyman who has never played more than 37 games in a season, Wedgewood’s 13 wins so far this season lead all NHL goalies, and are just three fewer than his career high of 16 with the Dallas Stars. After starting in Colorado’s last game, a 3-1 win over the Vancouver Canucks, Wedgewood was forced to leave midway through due to a back issue, and is currently listed as day-to-day.

After missing the first month of the season with a lower-body injury, Blackwood is now on a six-game winning streak after starting his season with an overtime loss. The 28-year-old boasts a career-best 1.84 goals-against average and .930 save percentage to go along with two shutouts in just six starts.

Amid the injury challenges, minor-league call-up Trent Miner has also helped the Avalanche get points against two of the top teams in the Eastern Conference. On Oct. 26, the 24-year-old delivered 20 saves over a perfect 51:20 after coming in to relieve Wedgewood, but the Carolina Hurricanes earned a shootout win. Three nights later, he got his team to overtime before an extra-time loss to the New Jersey Devils.

Over the next six games, the Avalanche will play four times on the road, starting Thursday against the New York Islanders at UBS Arena (7 p.m. ET). Per Corey Masisak of the Denver Post, Blackwood will start and Miner will back up on Thursday but Wedgewood could be available later in the road trip.

The way the Avalanche have been scoring, they should be able to withstand any goaltending challenges until Wedgewood is ready to return to action.

For now, fans should watch for two things:

First, which team will hand Colorado its second regulation loss of the season? The only squad that has done so to date is the Bruins, at TD Garden back on Oct. 25 — and only by one goal in a 3-2 victory.

Second, can the Colorado Avalanche maintain their current pace to set a new all-time record for total points in a season? With the NHL schedule expanding to 84 games in 2026-27, it would be exciting for Colorado to set a new standard to close out the league’s 82-game era.