Are the Colorado Avalanche Immature?

Are the Colorado Avalanche immature?

That may seem like a silly question concerning a mostly 20-something (and one 19-year-old) group of young men who photo-bomb each other during interviews and consider a face-full of shaving cream an appropriate birthday present.

Maturity in Hockey

Again, this seems like a silly question. Probably the least amount of time any one of the players has played hockey is 15 years, and some have certainly gone more than a couple decades. They have achieved the highest levels of the sport with their skill and talent, sure, but also knowledge of the game. No one should question a professional athlete’s knowledge of the game.

Something that is less controllable by the athlete, though, is his game emotion. And that, I think, is where the crux of the Colorado Avalanche’s problem. Only eight of the Avalanche’s core players are 30 or over, and three of those guys are brand new to the team this year.

Age is not the only determinant of maturity, especially in professional sports. Rather, it’s a fine line between the experience to know what to do, and the youth to fully execute it. Players like Alex Tanguay may be drawing that process out, but no one questions on which side of his career’s zenith he is.

Illusion of Draft Picks

Teams in today’s NHL take great pride in growing their team rather than putting it together. They are proud of having drafted their talent rather than trading for or signing it. At first glance, the reason for that pride may not be immediately obvious.

Something that is obvious: struggling teams get the highest draft picks. The high draft picks are the most talented players, the ones who have the most potential to be real game-changers, literally.

However, they are being drafted onto poor teams. And everyone knows hockey is a team game. No one player can make or break a team.

No, not even Sidney Crosby. Not even Patrick Roy is his heyday.

Not sure? Well, look at the Avalanche. No one questions they have phenomenal goal tending. During his peak, Calvin Pickard was limiting opponents to one goal a game. He still commands the second best save percentage in the NHL. And no one’s going to call Semyon Varlamov a slouch in the goal tending department.

Why do the Colorado Avalanche not have a better record, then, considering they have goalies keeping the puck out of the net? Because that single goal is the game-winner if your team can’t score.

Look at it the other way. Last season Alex Ovechkin was the only player to get 50 goals. Yet his team, the Washington Capitals, did not qualify for the playoffs.

Hockey is a team sport. No one player can make enough of a difference to save a struggling team.

Quality of Experience

What does the draft have to do with the Colorado Avalanche and their relatively maturity? Well, if a single player, no matter his skill and talent, cannot vastly improve a poor team, what happens? The player plays on a poor team. Even worse, the team starts playing for another high draft pick.

The player learns how to lose.

The Colorado Avalanche had high draft picks in 2009, 2011 and 2013. Matt Duchene, Gabriel Landeskog and Nathan MacKinnon all got drafted to struggling teams.

More importantly, Landeskog and, especially, Duchene got drafted to teams that continued to struggle after their inclusion. Duchene especially played on teams vying for a bad enough record to earn another high draft pick for several years. Several of his most formative years.

I don’t know what that really looks like from the inside, but I can suspect. If you understand, even tacitly, that your team kind of wants to lose games, you allow yourself mental lapses. Maintaining the will to win against the odds is exhausting. Why bother if it’s not going to work, and the honchos don’t really want it to anyway?

After awhile, that mental lapse must become second-nature. You learn how to lose.

So, returning to the main question, are the core of Avalanche players immature in NHL hockey? Sort of. It’s not so much that they don’t comprehend the game, or even have the mental stamina to grind a win out. It’s that they have been trained to allow themselves to lapse.

Now that the Avalanche finally have a chance to become contenders, it becomes frustrating to the fan-base when the players seem to take a period off. We hear again and again how they need to “play the whole 60,” yet they don’t go out and do it regularly.

However, we all know it’s hard to break bad habits.

Well, considering the game and their histories, it should come as no surprise that the veterans Alex Tanguay and Jarome Iginla are leading the team in scoring. They have enough maturity to put their heads down and keep grinding away. If they were ever allowed mental lapses, those have been chased away by their actual maturity.

The Need for Patience

As for the youngsters — I’m sure this is why head coach Patrick Roy preaches patience. Last season was their turnaround year. This is their actual learning year, their season to lose — and see that it’s not ok anymore.

No one is happy with the losing record because no one wants another high draft pick anymore. Everyone wants the playoffs. Everyone wants to see captain Gabriel Landeskog lifting the Stanley Cup. And nothing but sheer hard work and the will to win will achieve that.

Well, luckily for the Avs Nation, with youth comes resiliency. The youngsters are competitors — that’s how they got into the NHL in the first place. They may have learned some bad habits in the rebuilding years, but their youth should allow them to rebound all the quicker.

Like coach Roy says — it just takes some patience along with the hard work.