LAS VEGAS — Nathan MacKinnon corralled the puck in the neutral zone, casually wheeled around and saw Cale Makar making a break for it on the other side of the ice. It’s a play the two make all the time, in both directions — two of the most gifted players on the planet playing catch, toying with opponents, scoring almost at will.But this time, in Game 4 of the Western Conference final, with the Colorado Avalanche backed up against the wall and a dream season on the brink of utter disaster, MacKinnon’s pass was just out of Makar’s reach, the defenseman lunging for it but merely nudging it into the corner rather than receiving it cleanly and breaking in on net.Is that pass on target if MacKinnon has two healthy knees to push off? Is Makar able to reach it if he has full range of motion in his shoulder? Does Vegas’ Mark Stone not score 45 seconds later if Colorado buries that chance? Do the Avalanche go on to grind out a narrow win, keep their season alive, go back home to Denver and get to work on a mile-high miracle?That’s all Colorado has left after enduring the most shocking sweep in the Stanley Cup playoffs since John Tortorella’s Columbus Blue Jackets dusted the Presidents’ Trophy-winning Tampa Bay Lightning in the first round in 2019: a bunch of what-ifs.What if MacKinnon didn’t block that Shea Theodore shot with his right knee in Game 3? What if Makar’s shoulder was good to go from Game 1? What if the offense hadn’t dried up? What if the depth scorers had actually scored? What if the Vegas Golden Knights didn’t suddenly turn into, in Jared Bednar’s words, “a buzzsaw”?Those what-ifs will haunt the Avalanche all summer — a summer that’ll be about three weeks longer than they had expected, than they had hoped. But there’s a question that’s far more pressing than all the what-ifs.What now?Captain Gabriel Landeskog repeatedly said “we’ll be back” in a somber visitors dressing room at T-Mobile Arena on Tuesday night, and Makar offered a humorless chuckle when asked if the Avalanche would be able to run it back with this core that has achieved so much, yet left so much on the table.There are still nine players remaining from the team that won the Stanley Cup in 2022, but they seemed destined for so much more. Colorado was going to be the next Tampa Bay, the next Pittsburgh, the next Chicago, the next Los Angeles. Instead, they remain one-Cup wonders, a dominant regular-season team with precious little to show for it over the past four years. A season that started with an astonishing 31-2-7 run ended the same way 30 other teams’ seasons will end — in crushing disappointment.But it hurts that much more when you know how good you can be.“We said at the beginning of the year (that) we’re judged by how we play in the playoffs,” Makar said. “Unfortunately this year, we were able to take a step forward, but in a sense, a step back, too. It’s tough to process.”Nobody knows better how special opportunities like this are than Landeskog, who spent three full seasons working his way back from career-threatening injuries and multiple surgeries to get here. But Landeskog will be 34 next season. MacKinnon will be 31. Brock Nelson will be 35. Nazem Kadri will be 36. Devon Toews will be 32. Josh Manson will be 35. Valeri Nichushkin will be 31. Scott Wedgewood will be 34.This core is only getting older. And this league never gets any easier.“You never know if you’re ever going to get the chance again,” Landeskog said. “I think that’s what hurts. It’s hard making the playoffs, and it’s hard winning one round, and two rounds, let alone going all the way. You never know what the next opportunity is going to look like. For us, (it’s) believing in this group, believing in the guys we have in this organization, that we’ll give ourselves the best chance possible year after year. But having said that, there’s 32 teams trying to win it. It’s hard.”Hence all the looming, uncomfortable questions.It starts at the top. Multiple reports have speculated that the Nashville Predators could target Avalanche general manager Chris MacFarland to run their hockey operations department. And if MacFarland does stay, what will he do with Bednar? The second-longest-tenured coach in the league has had a hell of a run in Colorado, but since that 2022 championship, his Avs have a first-round loss, a second-round loss, a first-round loss and now a third-round loss. After 10 years, is the message getting stale? Does Colorado need the same kind of electric shock Vegas got when it replaced Bruce Cassidy with Tortorella with just eight games left in the regular season?Makar, again, scoffed at the idea, saying the blame falls on the players. But Bednar’s seat is warming up. That’s just life at the top.“Coaches are coaches,” Makar said. “He means so much to this team and he’s allowed us to play our games. … He deserves a lot of credit for getting us to this point. He’s not playing the game, he’s not out on the ice. He’s giving us everything he possibly can, information-wise, to go out there and be the best we can be. You feel like you let people down, and he’s one of those guys. You feel like he works so hard, the whole coaching staff, everybody, you just feel like you let them down a little bit.”And what of this core, so deep and so talented and so underwhelming in this conference final? MacKinnon is possibly the best player in the world, and Makar is in that same conversation. But beyond that, there are more questions to answer.Martin Nečas had a 100-point season, but vanished against Vegas. Brock Nelson had a Selke Trophy-caliber season, but could barely hit the net in the playoffs. Neither one was all that impressive in last year’s first-round loss to the Dallas Stars, either. Are they just regular-season performers? Was it a mistake to trade Mikko Rantanen — a proven playoff performer, a guy who all but singlehandedly eliminated his old team last year — for Nečas and Jack Drury?Is MacFarland’s bargain-hunting goaltending tandem of career backup Wedgewood (who had a remarkable regular season but was pedestrian against Vegas) and journeyman Mackenzie Blackwood (who was brilliant in Game 4 but lost the net to Wedgewood earlier in the year) not championship material? Is Kadri past his prime, his acquisition at the trade deadline a desperate attempt to rekindle past glory?Is the window closing? Is the core flawed — or worse, aging out, the burden on MacKinnon and Makar too great?Or was this the series just a fluke, an aberration, a run of bad luck?To be fair to the Avalanche, it’s simple enough to explain it away as such. MacKinnon was hurt. Makar was hurt. Nichushkin was hurt. Sam Malinski was hurt. Kadri might have still had an issue with a hand injury suffered last month. And all of them looked like shells of themselves at times in this series. But was it because they were hindered, or was it because Vegas was just better?The Avs remained defiant in defeat, sounding a little too much like Cleveland Cavaliers coach Kenny Atkinson, clinging to flattering analytics during his team’s own conference-final sweep at the hands of the New York Knicks.“Sometimes you question the bounces that we should be getting and just don’t happen,” Makar said. “I felt like we were generating enough to create chances, doing enough things to find the back of the net a couple times, and yeah, it just comes down to one chance, and I felt like every game in this series was like that.”“Sometimes I think we did a good job,” Bednar said after giving goalie Carter Hart and the Vegas defenders their due. “Like I said before, you’re looking at this series going into this final game — the analytics are tight, they’re close in all aspects.”“The first three games I watched, I was kind of in awe of what was happening,” Blackwood said. “It didn’t feel real. Today just kind of piled on to that.”MacKinnon didn’t talk after the game, with a team spokesperson saying he was with team doctors. The no-nonsense superstar probably wouldn’t have been so forgiving with his words. Of those players who did talk, only Logan O’Connor — often Colorado’s most dangerous player in this series despite being a fourth-liner — seemed to face the reality of what had just happened.“Disappointed, humiliated,” he said. “I think, to a man, (we) just weren’t good enough, not a single guy was the whole entire series. A team’s going to make you pay. We let down coaches, each other, fans, management. It’s on us as players to be far better than we were. The results speak for itself. Just tons, lot of disappointment right now.”Bednar said it would take “a little bit of time” before he could truly process the conference-final faceplant and put the season in its proper perspective. If Colorado does take drastic measures and cut ties with Bednar, he’ll only be out of a job as long as he wants to be. He’s a terrific coach. This was a terrific team. It was a terrific season.But the ending was terrible. Again. And when you’re supposed to be contending for the Stanley Cup every year, eventually there are consequences. The Avalanche seemed inevitable since Day 1. But instead of a summer of celebration, a long summer of soul-searching awaits.“Losing f—ing sucks, no matter how you do it,” Blackwood said. “But losing like that, it stings a little bit more. It’s a tough pill to swallow.”And it only gets tougher from here.