DENVER — The Colorado Avalanche and Los Angeles Kings were set to open their Western Conference first-round series Sunday at Ball Arena, with Game 1 carrying the kind of weight that usually follows the first puck drop in April. Colorado had already shown it can beat Los Angeles, winning 4-2 when the teams met March 2, and the Avalanche arrived with home ice and the Presidents’ Trophy.
Nazem Kadri and Josh Manson both practiced Saturday, giving Colorado a cleaner injury picture going into the series. Kadri missed five games with a finger injury and said he felt good to be back on the ice, while Manson returned after sitting out the past three games with an undisclosed injury. Kadri has nine points in 16 games with Colorado, including four goals and five assists, and Manson has 31 points in 79 games, with five goals and 26 assists.
That matters because the first game in a best-of-7 series tends to shape everything that follows. Teams that win Game 1 have gone on to win the series 535 times against 252 losses, a.680 clip, and the trend held in last year’s playoffs as well, when teams that took a 1-0 lead went 10-5 overall and 6-2 in the first round. Colorado knows that math well, and it is not walking into this series as a neutral participant; it is the league’s best regular-season team and a group that has lifted two Stanley Cup championships since 2021-22.
Los Angeles comes in with a different look than it had the first time these clubs met this month. The Kings acquired Artemi Panarin from the New York Rangers on Feb. 4, and he played his first game with Los Angeles on Feb. 25 after the 2026 Winter Olympic break. Panarin has 27 points in 26 games with the Kings, and Colorado coach Jared Bednar said the addition has made Los Angeles more dangerous offensively, especially with Adrian Kempe, Anze Kopitar and Panarin lined up together.
The change in Los Angeles also included a change behind the bench. Jim Hiller was fired on March 1, and D.J. Smith coached his first game as interim coach the next night, when Colorado beat the Kings 4-2. Smith said the Avalanche won the Presidents’ Trophy for a reason and pointed to their depth, their Olympians and the need for one or two players to produce a special stretch if Los Angeles is going to knock them out.
That is the friction point in this series. Colorado is healthy enough to look like a favorite and dangerous enough to play like one, while Los Angeles has spent the final weeks of the season trying to absorb a major addition and a coaching change at the same time. Game 1 will not settle the series, but it will tell a lot about whether the Kings can slow a group that has already looked sharper and more complete since the break, or whether the Avalanche will turn their regular-season edge into the start of another long run.
