DENVER — There were 14 people huddled around Scott Wedgewood’s locker following an off-day practice — six of them with cameras in their hands, the other eight fighting to get a question in and straining to get their recording devices close enough to the loquacious goaltender to document his answers.Directly across the room, Mackenzie Blackwood was casually unlacing his skates in solitude.That’s Mackenzie Blackwood, the supposed answer to the Colorado Avalanche’s goaltending woes, the man in the first year of a five-year contract paying him $5.25 million a season, the long-underrated goalie expected to backstop the Avalanche back to the promised land.When a reporter sidled up next to him and asked if he had a minute, Blackwood seemed genuinely surprised.“To talk?” he said quizzically.The Stanley Cup playoffs are merciless, with coaches required to be ruthless in their lineup decisions. There’s no time for sentimentality, no concern about the bigger picture, the future. Wedgewood might be a 33-year-old career backup with just a year left on his contract, but he’s been the better goalie, so he’s got the net — for now, at least.Blackwood knows the pendulum can swing back in his direction at any moment. It already has once, during the Avalanche’s second-round series against the Minnesota Wild. “The Lumberyard” has been splitting duties all season, and in this age of goalie tandems, why should the playoffs be any different?“There’s two jobs, obviously,” Blackwood said. “It’s just (who gets) the playing time, right? Wedgie’s played great this year, he’s worked really hard and he’s earned the opportunity he’s gotten. This year might not have gone exactly the way that I had hoped for; had some challenges. You want to play as much as you can. But if it’s not you, then we’re a team first. Our goal isn’t to have the best individual accolades; we’re trying to win a Cup. If he’s going to play and play well and give us a chance to win, or if that’s me, you just want the team to have the best chance of reaching our goal.”The mutual respect and support the two goalies have for each other has been one of this team’s great strengths. The two journeymen — Wedgewood, a 10-year backup, and Blackwood, a mostly middling career performer — pushed each other to new heights this season, winning the Jennings Trophy as the NHL’s stingiest duo. Wedgewood had a league-leading .921 save percentage in 43 starts, while Blackwood had a .904 save percentage in 36 starts. Wedgewood was seventh in the league with 32.42 goals saved above expected, per Evolving Hockey, and Blackwood had a healthy 19.08.Goaltending has been a strength all season for Colorado. But as the calendar creeps toward June, with only pressure-packed showdowns against powerhouse teams left on the schedule, it’s fair to wonder if it’s actually the Avalanche’s Achilles’ heel and the one thing that could stop them from winning it all.Wedgewood was chased from the net by the Wild in Game 3. Blackwood was yanked after one period in Game 5 before Colorado’s three-goal comeback victory. And while Wedgewood wasn’t the reason the Avalanche lost Game 1 to the Vegas Golden Knights, it was a soft goal by Dylan Coghlan between the pads — the goalie lifting his stick off the ice as he went down for the save, opening the five-hole at exactly the wrong moment — that opened the scoring after a tense first half of the game in a massive momentum shift. In a series featuring two championship-caliber teams, there’s no leeway for goals like that. Carter Hart was better. The Golden Knights won. Simple as that.The Lumberyard is hardly on fire, but it might be splintering just a little bit.Wedgewood and Blackwood earned that Jennings Trophy, and they’ve earned the respect, admiration and trust of their teammates and coaches. But they’re also in uncharted territory. Entering this postseason, they had played a combined 16 years in the NHL with a scant 11 playoff appearances between them. Wedgewood had never even started a playoff game, and his relief appearance in the Dallas Stars’ blowout loss to Vegas in the 2023 playoffs had been the only conference final outing for either of them.The fact is, both goalies are unproven at this level, and both have played beyond their usual usage. Wedgewood had never played in more than 37 games in an NHL season before this one, and typically played far fewer than that. Game 2 on Thursday will be his 55th this season. Meanwhile, Blackwood has appeared in 42 games this season, a plateau he’s only reached three times before.It’s one of the reasons the Avalanche have a tandem in the first place, so that neither one gets driven into the ground. They fully expected to use both goalies in the postseason. Playing goalie is hard. Playing goalie a lot is harder. Playing goalie a lot in the modern-day NHL, with every team coming at you in waves of speed and strength and skill, is harder than it’s ever been.It wouldn’t have been reasonable to ask Wedgewood to start 20-something straight games in the playoffs. Certainly not when he’s never been a No. 1 before this season.“The game’s gone from a little more north-south to a little more east-west,” Wedgewood said. “It’s not just straight — now, it’s like a ball of yarn in your D-zone, so there’s a lot more ups and downs and post integrations and torque on the body than maybe the early ’90s, early 2000s, (when it) was more of a linear game. (Goalies back then) could just push downhill, get to a post, and there was a lot more standup. So just torque on the body would be the first thing.“And now, everyone can shoot and everyone can score. The mentality of preparing for a game in the NHL now is not just, ‘Yeah, I’ve got to focus on three guys.’ You’ve got to focus on a 20-man roster, always know who has the puck. There’s a lot that goes into it. The skill level of all the players makes you work a little bit harder, then just the way the game’s played a little more east-west makes it more fatiguing.”Colorado is hardly alone. Hart has been playing extremely well lately, but as Vegas coach John Tortorella is quick to point out, the Knights have a Cup-winning goalie in Adin Hill waiting in the wings. In the East, the Carolina Hurricanes have ridden Frederik Andersen to two straight sweeps, but Andersen’s history suggests backup Brandon Bussi had better stay ready. Even the Montreal Canadiens, with rookie sensation Jakub Dobeš, faced questions about whether a change was necessary during the Buffalo Sabres series as fatigue became a factor.The NHL is indeed evolving into a new era of tandem goaltending, but having a true go-to, a true No. 1, is still the ideal situation. The Florida Panthers had Sergei Bobrovsky the last two years, the Tampa Bay Lightning had Andrei Vasilevskiy in 2020 and 2021, the St. Louis Blues had Jordan Binnington in 2019, the Washington Capitals had Braden Holtby in 2018, the Chicago Blackhawks had Corey Crawford in 2013 and 2015, and the Los Angeles Kings had Jonathan Quick in 2012 and 2014. That’s not to say you can’t win with two goalies — Vegas had Hill and Laurent Brossoit in 2023, Colorado had Darcy Kuemper and Pavel Francouz in 2022, and the Pittsburgh Penguins had Marc-André Fleury and Matt Murray in 2017. But precious few teams have won it all while toggling back and forth the way Colorado has — and might continue to.“There’s not too many Andrei Vasilevskiys out there,” Colorado coach Jared Bednar said. “It’s the comfort of repeating what you’ve done in the regular season. If you got into the playoffs, you’ve been a good team. If you’ve advanced in the playoffs, you’ve been a good team. And if you’ve used both guys the whole way in order to get you there, then I think — to a certain extent — you might need both guys to keep advancing.”Having two goalies you believe in is great. But when both goalies are on relatively equal footing in terms of skill and track record — as Wedgewood and Blackwood are — a coach won’t know if he’s picked the right one until it’s too late. And this wasn’t by design, either.Avalanche general manager Chris MacFarland dramatically remade his team during the 2024-25 season, starting in goal by sending struggling starter Alexandar Georgiev and a 2026 second-rounder (among other pieces) to the San Jose Sharks for Blackwood in December 2024, and within a few weeks had signed him to that five-year contract extension. Long respected in goalie circles but with little success to show for it, Blackwood looked the part of a No. 1, with a .913 save percentage the rest of the way. But after a pedestrian first-round loss to Dallas, Blackwood had an underwhelming 2025-26 campaign, losing the net to Wedgewood.Wedgewood is a terrific story, a beloved teammate and go-to voice for reporters, even when he wasn’t playing, because of his ability to put the game in perspective. But is he really as good as he’s looked this season behind this dominant Colorado team? Did he suddenly become an elite netminder, the kind of guy who leads the league in save percentage?Is the zone he’s worked his way into sustainable?“In my mind, I’ve always kind of been here,” Wedgewood said. “It’s been trying to find an opportunity to get in one. I’ve got to be thankful for the team for having faith in me.”The Avalanche do. They have faith in both goalies. It’s not lip service when they say it, either. They’ve seen it all season long from both guys.But it’s late May now. Cale Makar is hurt. Vegas is peaking at the right time. And the games are faster, tenser, heavier — physically, mentally and emotionally — than either of these goalies has ever experienced before.So, is the Lumberyard a strength or a weakness? A duo of destiny pushing each other toward greatness, or a tenuous tandem that’s not ready for the moment? We’ll know soon enough.“I don’t think anyone had me on their bingo card for this kind of trajectory in my career,” Wedgewood said. “But it just proves that if you look at any goalie in this league — the 64 of us that are rostered all the way to the 90 that are probably on people’s call-up list — we can all play the game and do great things if you get put in a position to thrive. But you’ve got to stop the puck at the end of the day. You’ve got to do your job.”Whoever’s job it is.