Game 2 of the Western Conference Second Round at Ball Arena went 5-2 to Colorado on Tuesday night. The Avalanche replaced their Game 1 starter Jake Hofer with Scott Wedgewood, who made 29 saves; the Wild started newest-arrival Filip Gustavsson — their third netminder in two games, after rookie Jesper Wallstedt gave up eight goals in the 9-6 Game 1 — and Gustavsson allowed goals on the opening two shots of the first period and the first shot of the second. [1] He settled to 18 saves on 22 shots and was pulled for an extra skater late. [2] In the first period, Nathan MacKinnon assisted on Martin Necas' opener and Gabriel Landeskog's power-play goal — his 21st career multipoint playoff period, passing Joe Sakic for the most in Colorado franchise history. [3]
The paper's May 5 reading on Game 1 made the case that the 9-6 opener had argued the genre — playoff hockey as the slow, low-event game of the cap-rise era — no longer existed. Game 2 reverted to a 5-2 and made a different argument, more useful: in the modern NHL, deep teams are insulated from goaltending volatility; shallow teams are not. The Wild's three netminders in two games — Wallstedt, then Gustavsson — is the architecture of a roster that built around Kirill Kaprizov's offense without solving its goaltending problem. The Avalanche's offense is so deep — MacKinnon, Necas, Landeskog, Nazem Kadri, Cale Makar — that the goaltending question is theirs to absorb, not solve.
The MacKinnon record is the second one of his playoff career. He passed Sakic on the regular-season points list (post-relocation) on October 7, 2025, against the Kings. [4] December 11, 2025, he passed Sakic for most goals in Avalanche team history (392). [5] Tuesday's mark — most multipoint playoff periods in franchise history at 21 — adds a postseason measure. None of these records is the all-time Quebec-Avalanche franchise total, where Sakic's 1,641 points still stand. The records MacKinnon now holds are the Denver-era totals. They are also, taken together, the case that this is now MacKinnon's franchise, with Sakic as president and the historical reference point.
The advanced-stats picture from Game 2 is what bears watching for the Wild. Defenseman Quinn Hughes, who entered the game leading all postseason scorers, played 28:07 and finished minus-1 with no shots on goal — a rare night for the Vancouver-trade-deadline acquisition Minnesota built into a top-pair rotation. [6] MacKinnon delivered a third-period hit on Hughes that several Yahoo and ESPN game accounts highlighted. The Wild went 0-for-2 on the power play; Colorado went 2-for-5. The discipline gap was the game's structure.
The Avalanche are now 6-0 in this postseason — they swept the first round and have taken the first two from Minnesota. They are 18-2 in best-of-seven series after winning Games 1 and 2 since the 1995 relocation. [1] Game 3 shifts to Grand Casino Arena in St. Paul on Saturday. Wild head coach John Hynes will use the three-day break to decide whether to start Wallstedt — who carried Minnesota past Dallas in the first round — or stay with Gustavsson, who carried most of the regular season. [6] Either way, the goaltender question is the franchise question.
What is harder to argue against, on the basis of two games, is that Colorado's roster is built to win four-of-seven in any modern era of the league — high-event or low. MacKinnon's quote after Game 2 was unusually flat: "Just excited to play playoff hockey. Obviously, the best time of year." [3] The franchise that traded Mikko Rantanen at the deadline last year, and replaced him with Necas and a structural reorganization, is now executing on that bet. The Wild are executing on a different bet: the Kaprizov-centered roster, with goaltending as the ungoverned variable. Tuesday night's score makes the difference between the two designs visible.
The series shifts. The argument does not.
-- AMARA OKONKWO, Lagos