LAS VEGAS – In the dying final seconds of their championship dream, Father Time coldly broomed the Avs off the ice and out of the NHL playoffs.

“We’ll be back,” Colorado captain Gabe Landeskog vowed Tuesday night, while standing accountable at his locker stall in the aftermath of a 2-1 loss to Vegas that eliminated the Avalanche.

But in his next exasperated breath, Landeskog spoke a harsher truth: “You never know if you’re ever going to get the chance again. I think that’s what hurts.”

Across a room where the air was leaden with regret, goalie Mackenzie Blackwood cursed, bewildered at how quickly the wheels fell off of this hockey wagon.

“It (bleeping) sucks,” Blackwood said, voice raw with emotion.

Asked how he was going to process getting swept out of the Western Conference finals by the Knights, Blackwood’s aching eyes strained to find an answer, before he replied: “Not going to do it tonight, that’s for sure. Think about it over the next week, when you’re not frustrated …”

When the Avs take time to look in the mirror and analyze how everything went so wrong so fast, the truth will be as evident as the gray in their beards and the wrinkles in their faces.

Halfway down the long and bumpy road to the Stanley Cup, these Avs ran out of gas. When Vegas leaned heavily on the fastest team in the league, the guys in the burgundy and blue sweaters looked old and tired.

With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, maybe we should’ve known this Colorado quest was doomed from the start. These Avs were cursed. And it had nothing to do with carrying the weight of the Presidents’ Trophy.

While it’s true no team that has finished atop the league standings has won the Cup since the Chicago Blackhawks overcame the curse in 2013, there was another more powerful piece of history conspiring against the Avalanche.

The average age of the 20 Colorado players who dressed for Game 1 against Vegas was 30.8 years. In a sport increasingly ruled by speed, strength and athleticism, that was a ticking time bomb waiting to blow up in the Avalanche’s craggy old faces.

Read this stat and weep: No NHL team with an average age on the wrong side of 30 has hoisted the Cup since the Detroit Red Wings of Igor Larionov and Dominik Hasek from the Blood Feud era pulled off the feat way back in 2002.

The NHL is no league for old men. 

And almost to a man, recent moves to fortify the Colorado roster by front office honchos Chris MacFarland and Joe Sakic were not built to last.

The Avs pushed all their chips to the middle of the table with a there-is-no tomorrow mentality. The Cup-or-bust approach was never more apparent when Colorado brought back 35-year-old Nazem Kadri in the waning seconds of the trade deadline to be the team’s 3C.

After cruising through two rounds of the playoffs without a sweat, the Avs hit a wall that fell on Kadri, Brock Nelson and Val Nichushkin like a ton of bricks against the Golden Knights. While scoring only seven goals in four games was alarming, it was foreshadowed by Colorado’s inability to fight its way through the neutral zone.

While teammates tried to convince themselves the Avs were victims of bad puck luck, Blackwood insisted he had no doubt there’s another Cup run in this group.

Why? “Freakin’ great players,” Blackwood said.

But history loudly disagrees, shouting these Avs are too freakin’ old.

By the time Colorado gets another shot at the playoffs, this is how old significant contributors will be.

Nathan MacKinnon: 31

Artturi Lehkonen: 31

Nichushkin: 32

Brett Kulak: 33

Devon Toews: 33

Landeskog: 34

Nelson: 35

Josh Manson: 35

Kadri: 36

Brent Burns: 42

With 10 key players on the wrong side of their 30th birthdays, the championship window isn’t open. It’s cracked. And falling into irreversible disrepair.

We love these guys, but after watching Burns walk off into the sunset, the Avs need to push another three or four of these veterans out the door. For starters, here’s looking at you, Val and Naz.

With precious little trade capital and far from ideal space under the salary cap, making deals for a fresh infusion of talent won’t be easy. While young New York Rangers wing Will Cuylle seems like a pipe dream, maybe Colorado could work magic to add physicality with somebody like Mathieu Olivier from Columbus.

There are hard decisions ahead, requiring tearful farewells.

But run it back? With these Colorado players?

No way. Father Time waits for no one.

This old and tired group of Avs has run out of time.