The biggest loser of Round 1 of the Stanley Cup playoffs.

The Stanley Cup playoffs is a place where teams, general managers, coach's and of course players can earn legendary status and live on forever in the hearts and minds of hockey fans from around the globe, but it can also be a place where reputations are forever tarnished.

The 2025 Stanley Cup playoffs were no exception with Los Angeles Kings head coach Jim Hiller seeing fans calling for his job after a very questionable challenge in their series against the Edmonton Oilers proved to be a pivotal point in that series. Jets goaltender Connor Hellebuyck is another example with the favorite to win the Vezina headed for disaster after a truly terrible performance in the first round  only to be rescued by his teammates in the dying seconds of Game 7 on Sunday night.

While both of these are good examples there is now one man who stands above both of them as the biggest loser of the first round of the 2025 Stanley Cup playoffs, and that man is none other than Colorado Avalanche general manager Chris MacFarland. Coming into the playoffs, MacFarland was being praised around the league for the work he did in rebuilding the Avalanche's roster on the fly, but after just a single playoff round the narrative around MacFarland has shifted drastically.

Here is an example of some of the things that were being said about MacFarland just a little over a month ago:

"Macfarland deserves hardware  for that overhaul from the beginning of the year," said former NHLer Paul Bissonnette on the Spittin Chiclets podcast. "They had goaltending issues, they get two new goalies and they lock in their goalie of the future for a great deal in [Mackenzie] Blackwood. They go out and get [Ryan] Lindgren and [Jimmy] Vesey, then they end up snagging [Martin] Necas and [Jack] Drury. Then they not only go out and get Brock Nelson... and then on top of that they go out and get Charlie Coyle who is a perfect third line center for a cup run. This is one of the greatest in-season overhauls I have ever seen."

Of course two of the players listed above were acquired as a result of the trade that sent former Avalanche star forward Mikko Rantanen to the Carolina Hurricanes, a trade that could not have backfired more horribly for the Avalanche in the opening round of the playoffs. Rantanen would come back to haunt both MacFarland and the Avalanche putting up 12 points against them in the first round, more than any player in the playoffs at the time of this writing, and burying his former team with the first ever 3rd period hat trick in the history of Game 7s at the National Hockey League level.

It would be fair to say that Rantanen was far and away the most dominant player on the ice in this series, with Game 6 and Game 7 especially highlighting just how capable he was of taking over the series.

The praise for MacFarland's rebuilding of the roster in the regular season is all but gone now, replaced instead with many, many, fans calling for the Avalanche GM to be fired for trading one of the best playoff performers in franchise history.

I don't know that fans in Colorado will ever recover from the Rantanen trade and how it has played out for them this season and for that same reason I don't know that Chris MacFarland's reputation will ever recover either, at least as far as fans of the Colorado Avalanche are concerned.