there's no way in hell this team is even close to being a lottery team next year- they still probably make the playoffs lol

Do you realize how brittle and injury prone this team is? If the lose one of MacKinnon or Makar for an extended period of time(which is likely) their season is over.

Ehh they lost both of them for an extended period this season, including both at the same time for a spell.

I don't think they can do it again, I think they miss playoffs, just my take.

Maybe so, but it seems like them just having done exactly that in the same scenario you outlined is fairly good evidence that they can. But hey... if you say the Avs fall into the toilet, don't expect me to argue too much.

Why would they go into the season anticipating injuries? That's what this roster is doing. If they do that, they're firing the entire front office and Mackinnon still wills them to a playoff anyway.

Hard to take seriously something like "they're brittle" when they had a historically bad year for injuries after having all of something like 5 months of rest in the offseason since the Edmonton bubble - that's barely any time in 3 seasons of hockey. The Avs' stars were mostly uninjured the season they won the cup, give or take a broken finger.