The Stars Shine in Hollywood!

Mikko, MacKinnon and Makar power Avs to 5-2 win in LA.

Here we go… It all starts tonight! The long grind to a fourth Stanley Cup banner has a beginning and — for the 2023-24 Colorado Avalanche chasing that banner — it starts in Los Angeles.

After a much longer offseason than many anticipated, the Avs hit the ice for the season opener at Staples Center… I mean Crypto.com Arena (what a dumb name). It is a bit of a new-look Avalanche team this year as the depth of the team has gone through a complete overhaul, while the high-end talent remains.

We’ve written a bunch of pre-season outlooks and you have probably seen all the pundits make their picks. So enough wasting time and let's take a look at my pick to win the Stanley Cup take on the LA Kings.

PRE-GAME:

Tonight’s presumptive lines based on warmups:

Forwards
Drouin-MacKinnon-Rantanen 
Lehkonen-Johansen-Nichushkin 
Wood-Colton-Tatar 
MacDermid-Olofsson-O'Connor 

Defense
Toews-Makar 
Byram-Girard 
Johnson-Manson 

Goalies
Georgiev 
Annunen 

• Jonathan Drouin and Nathan MacKinnon are reunited in the NHL after an outstanding time together in Halifax, winning the Memorial Cup in 2013 in their final season together with the Mooseheads. If you’re reading this, you already knew that. But, it’s worth repeating as Drouin has looked great in the preseason in his Denver debut, while the expectations for MacKinnon are even higher after posting a career year a season ago.

• Can Mikko Rantanen match his performance from last year when he potted a franchise-record 55 goals and had a 105-point season? I don’t know if he can hit that number again, but last season showed that he can take his game to an unworldly level especially when needed, so who knows if that was just the start of something truly special.

• Is Cale Makar fully healthy? Dear lord, I hope so. The league is better when Cale Makar plays. I am a happier person when Cale Makar plays.

• Alexandar Georgiev is going to be better this year. That’s my big prediction. He had 40 wins and was the difference maker in so many games during his first campaign in the burgundy and blue. That being said, I think his stats get better this year as he continues to develop into a full-time starter.

• It’s been 164 days since that Game 7 loss to the Seattle Kraken that ended our hopes of a repeat. Too long between Avalanche hockey games for me. Let’s go.