The Colorado Avalanche are back in the Stanley Cup playoffs.

Yes, you read that correctly. A year after finishing with an embarrassing 22 wins and 48 points, the Avs flipped a majority of its veterans for younger rookies over the past 12 months and turned it into a team that rose to the occasion and defeated the Blues (in regulation) in a winner-gets-in contest on Saturday.

How exactly did this team come together? The core of the squad mirrors the one that lost 60 games a year ago, minus one major piece, of course. The Avalanche were not big spenders when free agency struck this past July nor did they come away with the coveted #1 overall pick that stepped right into the lineup like Nathan MacKinnon did in 2013. So to sum things up, there was something that willed this team to the playoffs that the Avs have been lacking for almost half a decade.

Camaraderie.

Yes, MacKinnon is probably going to win the Hart Trophy after scoring a career high 39 goals and 97 points. Yes, Mikko Rantanen had probably the quietest 84-point season in the NHL. Yes, Bernier stepped up and helped the Avs win 10 straight games when Varlamov went down. Yes, Varlamov answered the bell and appeared in 27 straight contests when Bernier went down and ended his season with a .920 save %. Yes, Gabriel Landeskog returned to form, Carl Soderberg had a spectacular underrated season, Tyson Barrie exploded offensively, Alexander Kerfoot established himself as an NHLer quicker than anybody thought, Sam Girard instantly became a top-4 defenseman and Jared Bednar was finally able to implement his aggressive fore-check system successfully. Yes… The Colorado Avalanche were good at hockey.

But none of that would have mattered had the leadership not brought this team together in September and more importantly, regrouped when Matt Duchene was removed from the locker room six weeks later.

He didn’t want to be a Colorado Avalanche anymore,” Erik Johnson told Denver media. “The fact that he didn’t want to be a player for the team anymore, I think guys in the room were kind of waiting for it to happen too.”

After Francois Beauchemin was bought out last summer, the Avs relied on Johnson to lead the blueline. With an ‘A’ stitched on his jersey for opening night, it was clear that he was now part of the leadership group in the locker room.

“We all want to win play for this team and win in Denver and he wanted to go somewhere else. That’s his right, but now we have the group in the room that we’re all going to be pulling on the same rope, in the same direction.”

But the former first overall draft pick was not the only player the Avs turned to when they needed leadership.

MacKinnon’s offensive explosion surprised some, but what made it more spectacular was the fact that the fifth year forward was able to do it while also becoming a full-time alternate captain and being called upon to lead the young forward group.

“It’s good,” MacKinnon explained. “It’s a thing that needed to happen. For Dutchy, just a change of scenery. He’s been here for eight or nine years, he’s ready to move on and I don’t know if we’re rebuilding, but we’re kind of revamping. Obviously, it’s tough losing Dutchy, but for the future it’s great.”

For Barrie, another vital piece of the Avs’ core that has been around since the last playoff run in 2014, losing another member of his 2009 draft class was not easy. But surely being the last man standing from that great top-heavy group of draft picks says a lot about his place in this franchise.

“Obviously, it’s no secret that was something he wanted,” Barrie told reporters after the deal was struck last November. “So, I think it’s probably good to put that behind us. We’re moving on. We wish him the best and it sounds like we got some good pieces coming back, so we’re excited to meet these new guys.”

It goes without saying the Avs will be underdogs heading into its first round series with Nashville. Colorado very much mirrors the Preds of a year ago that snuck into the playoffs only to sweep the Blackhawks, that had swept their regular-season series, en route to the Stanley Cup Final.

Though the mindset of an athlete is programmed to continuously improve on any success it achieves, the Avs’ leadership—the very same group that turned things around in short order, are not shying away from the accomplishment of making the playoffs.

“To make the playoffs, hopefully it becomes a routine thing,” MacKinnon told the Denver Post. “But I don’t think we expected this until the last couple months, when we really started to believe. It’s an unbelievable accomplishment. It’s got to be one of best accomplishments in modern sports history. We came in last by 20 points. We were the worst team in 25 years.”

“We’re going to embrace the underdog role,” Tyson Barrie added, when speaking to Mike Chambers of the Denver Post.

“We have an excited group in here, so we’re going to try to give them everything they can handle.”

While ‘everything they can handle’ may still not be enough to defeat the President Trophy winners from Nashville, it still will not take away from the success that was the 2017-18 Colorado Avalanche.

For the first time in a decade the Avs have seemingly done things right. They have a young team with a bright future, surrounded by the right veterans and an ample amount of prospects and draft picks to use to improve on this improbable run to the playoffs. All of that however will be a conversation for this summer.

But for now, let’s enjoy the ride. The Colorado Avalanche are back in the playoffs and they’re ready to make some noise.

(All quotes from ColoradoAvalanche.com and Denverpost.com/avalanche. All photos from ColoradoAvalanche.com)