If the Colorado Avalanche crafted a vision board during their brief preseason, the Presidents’ Trophy would have been on it. Nowhere near as prominently featured as the Stanley Cup, but there.

With a 5-1 win over the Los Angeles Kings in the regular-season finale, one piece of coveted hardware became theirs. It ensures home-ice advantage for as far as the Avalanche are able to go in the postseason. But coach Jared Bednar indicated it wasn’t just a means to an end.

“The Presidents’ Trophy is something to be proud of, in my opinion,” Bednar said after the game. “It’s a long time to get here. For some guys, they’ve been working toward it for 2-3 years.”

There’s satisfaction in setting a goal and seeing it through.

“It’s something we’ve been going for the whole year. It was a goal of ours starting in training camp,” said Tyson Jost, who scored twice Thursday night on the top line in place of injured Nathan MacKinnon.

“Just an awesome group of guys. An awesome regular season. There’s much more ahead of us here.”

There’s also satisfaction in being a “resilient group,” as Jost said. MacKinnon has missed four of five games heading into the postseason. Defenseman Samuel Girard missed six games in May, and Brandon Saad remains sidelined, among others.

“To have our guys accomplish that and dig in for it, work the way they work, win eight out of nine at the end of the year, five in a row, without some key players, I thought showed a lot of character,” Bednar said. “t’s a nice feather in their cap, and they should enjoy it.

“We’re going to be preparing for a whole new challenge.”

The team didn’t practice Friday, though Bednar said the coaches would likely come in and start working on the postseason. He guessed there would be a skate, an optional skate and a morning skate before the Avalanche host the St. Louis Blues in Game 1 on Monday night.

The first round hasn’t given Colorado much trouble the past two years. It beat the Calgary Flames in the first round in 2019 and the Arizona Coyotes in 2020, both four games to one.

This Blues team played the team hard late in the season, however, winning the two most recent games 5-3 and 4-1 in late April.

“It is a team that’s really picked it up in the end of the season,” Bednar said.

“If you look at their second half and how they’ve come alive…this is a real tough opponent.”

The second round has been the killer. Both postseason runs ended in Game 7 of Round 2 – in San Jose, Calif. in 2019, and in the NHL postseason bubble in 2020.

“We have the group right now. Now we just have to get to work,” regular-season scoring leader Mikko Rantanen said. “The experience, for sure, helps a lot.”

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