Complacency, lack of killer instinct looking like it’ll kill Avalanche again

EDMONTON, ALBERTA – I’ll be honest, the moment I thought the Avalanche might be in trouble for the second round of the playoffs came right after they’d just finished destroying the Arizona Coyotes in the first round of the playoffs.

Nathan MacKinnon and Gabe Landeskog were on the dais, fielding questions from me here in Edmonton and the rest of the Avs media back home on the couch. After the 7-1 closeout win over the Coyotes, MacKinnon said the attitude of the team was that “we’ve felt like our time has arrived.”

Landeskog said, “I think we’re ready to make that next step, no doubt. We’ve been a group that for the most part has been together for the last three, four years. We’ve grown together and we’ve been through the bad. But the group we have in the locker room has a lot of character and we’ve seen the product we can put on the ice.”

They did it again, I thought. They’re getting ahead of themselves, talking as if they’ve actually won something. Why are they spiking the football when they’re still only at the 30-yard line?