The Colorado Avalanche head into Game 4 of the Western Conference Final trailing the Vegas Golden Knights 3-0, a deficit they must erase Tuesday at T-Mobile Arena at 9 p.m. ET to keep their season alive.
Martin Necas, one of the Avalanche skaters trying to carry the club forward, said the locker room knows how unlikely a comeback would be but insists belief remains. "We know we’re where at, we know it (comeback) doesn’t happen very often, but we still feel confident in this group," Necas said, adding that Colorado hasn’t been outplayed across the series. "It’s not like we’ve been outplayed every game and their team is better than ours." He pointed to the club’s midseason stretches as proof that momentum can flip: "We had a lot of stretches this season where we won four in a row, so we just focus on the next game and take it home, and anything can happen."
The raw scoreline underlines the stakes. Vegas opened the series with a 4-2 victory in Game 1 after building a 3-0 lead and tacking on an empty-net goal. Game 2 ended 3-1 when the Golden Knights scored two goals in a 2:07 span in the third period to erase a 1-0 deficit. Colorado then surrendered a 3-0 advantage in Game 3 and lost 5-3 after giving up three goals in the second period and two more in the third.
That combination of results puts the Avalanche on the brink. No team had ever come back to win a series from a 3-0 deficit prior to the Stanley Cup Final, and only four teams had completed such a rally at any point in the playoffs — a historical reality that magnifies the difficulty of Colorado’s task and frames Tuesday’s game as effectively must-win.
Coach Jared Bednar did not downplay the size of the challenge when asked Tuesday. "The hill to climb, it’s definitely a tough one," he said, but he stressed the team’s posture. "I think our team’s played with more intensity and more desperation as the series has gone on and it hasn’t worked out for us yet," Bednar said. "This will be our most difficult challenge, but I believe we will show up and we will be ready to play, ready to compete for a win tomorrow night." He acknowledged the fine margins that have separated the teams: "It’s very evenly matched and the games have shown that. They’ve come out on top of three of them."
Injuries have added another layer to the equation. Defenseman Cale Makar missed the first two games of the series before returning for Game 3, and the Avalanche lost the lead they had in that contest. Star forward Nathan MacKinnon sustained a leg injury after blocking a shot in Game 3, but Bednar confirmed on Tuesday that MacKinnon would be in the lineup for Game 4.
Bednar also reflected on the margin for error Colorado has left. "Certainly, would love it only to be two, especially after last night, building a three-goal lead," he said. "But we are where we are now, and we know how fine the margins are, and we have to keep trying to exploit them and trying to make one more play than we have in the previous games, both on the offensive side and on the defensive side, to win a hockey game." When he framed the situation from that standpoint, he added, "When you look at it from that perspective, I think it becomes a lot more realistic."
The tension is obvious: Colorado’s recent inability to protect leads and Vegas’s knack for late pushes have produced three straight losses, leaving the Avalanche facing a statistical long shot. That reality sits beside locker-room conviction. Necas’s blunt assessment — recognizing the rarity of a comeback while backing his teammates — set the tone for a group that must combine urgency and execution Tuesday night if it is to extend the series.
Outside the immediate series conversation, names and narratives swirl across social media and sports talk; among them, the name Mackenzie Blackwood has appeared in broader NHL chatter. For the Avalanche, however, the only debate that matters is in T-Mobile Arena: can they break the sequence and force Game 5, or will Vegas close the series with another win?
What happens next is simple and absolute: a loss eliminates Colorado, and a win keeps an unlikely comeback alive. Given that no team had ever rallied from 3-0 before the Final and only four teams have done so at all, the Avalanche are attempting something rare — and Game 4 is where their postseason either slips away or finds a new life.
