Victor Olofsson transformed into a lethal force on the ice Tuesday night.
DENVER — Victor Olofsson carries the aura of a Bond villain—the kind who’d finance rogue states while enriching plutonium in a remote tundra—but fortunately for the Colorado Avalanche, his menace exists only in myth. In reality, he’s disarmingly polite, the kind of gentleman whose quiet intensity channels itself not into world domination but into the blur of his Bauer Pulse. That refined menace found its release Tuesday night, as Olofsson’s first-career hat trick left everyone in the arena with their hearts racing.
Many people will agree with this, but sometimes hockey fans can be impatient and irrational. If something isn’t quite right just an eighth of the way through an 82-game season, it’s the end of the world. That’s how Avalanche fans have approached the power play entering the 11th game of the 2024-25 season, but one person out of the whole bunch seemed particularly unbothered, implying that the critics just needed to be a little patient.
And that was Olofsson—yes, that Olofsson—the same guy who notched his first-career NHL hat trick on Tuesday night, leading an 8–4 rout of the New Jersey Devils at Ball Arena. The Avalanche power play, once a source of endless frustration, suddenly came alive, striking four times in the game. In the span of an hour, Colorado’s special teams surged from 30th in the league to 11th.
In our October 20 interview, Olofsson seemed almost prescient. He never explicitly called for patience, yet the subtext was unmistakable—a quiet confidence that the goals, and the rhythm of his game, would inevitably arrive.
And much like a Bond villain, he struck when no one saw it coming—and then did it again. And again. Each goal carried that same air of theatrical precision, as if Olofsson had been waiting for the perfect moment to reveal his master plan. Thankfully for the rest of humanity, his weapon of choice is a hockey stick, not a doomsday device. 10 points in 11 games at a cap hit of $1.5 million might just qualify as the greatest heist in the NHL.
Patience Young One
“I think the looks have been pretty good,” Oloffson said. “We haven’t probably gotten the puck in the net as much as we want, but there’s definitely good looks, and I’m sure it’s going to be clicking here pretty soon. It’s gonna be a big factor for us the further in the season we go. The power play is always a big part of winning hockey games.
“Right now we haven’t really been needing it so far. We’ve been playing very solidly, but there’s gonna be tight games where we need the power play to step up, but I have no worries about that.”
Olofsson made it quite clear that he had no worries about the power play, but when it was time to unveil the artillery, the Swede, who was drafted by the Buffalo Sabers 181st overall in the 2014 NHL Entry Draft, was just as robust as the RBS 70. The 30-year-old Olofsson, who signed a one-year deal with the Avalanche on August 20, entered the game with five assists in 10 games. It was time to wreak havoc.
Goalofsson
The first rocket came at 2:31 of the second period when Olofsson snapped a wrister top shelf from the right circle that went over Markstrom’s shoulder to give the Avalanche a 3-0 lead.
Olofsson, who posted 29 points (15 goals, 14 assists) in 56 games for the Vegas Golden Knights last season, extended the lead to 3–0 at 2:31 of the second period, wiring a snap shot from the right circle that sailed over Markstrom’s shoulder and tucked neatly under the crossbar. Nathan MacKinnon followed with a strike to make it 4–0, and Parker Kelly converted on a breakaway to stretch the margin to five. Then, in a dizzying sequence that felt equal parts chaos and inevitability, the Devils answered with four straight goals, flipping the game on its head—if only for a moment.
Olofsson’s second goal came on the power play, pushing the lead to 7–4 at 3:10 of the third period after MacKinnon left him a smooth drop pass in the right circle. Fourteen minutes later, he finished the job—Jack Drury sent a perfect cross-ice feed right onto his stick, and Olofsson wasted no time snapping it home for his first-career hat trick and the exclamation point on the night.
“You're never going to have 60 perfect minutes, it doesn't really work that way, but we're trying to be as perfect as we can," Olofsson said after the game. "I think we did a lot of good tonight."
While it wasn’t a flawless performance and there are certainly areas to refine, one of the season’s earliest frustrations among fans was addressed in perhaps the most elegant fashion imaginable. The challenge now is sustaining that level of play for the remainder of the season.
But one thing is crystal clear: Victor Olofsson is a bona fide assassin on the ice—strictly in the hockey sense, thankfully.
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