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Colorado Avalanche Depth Affected By Injuries

By Nadia Archuleta |
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At the end of last season head coach Patrick Roy showed up to a press conference with a paper listing the Colorado Avalanche injury list. The implications were clear — the list was so long, he couldn’t be expected to remember it. Frankly, he seemed to be doing it for effect.

Indeed, coach Roy has not made a show of referring to his injured reserve list this year. There’s no show — the Colorado Avalanche are the walking wounded.

The Avalanche Twitter account pointed out a franchise record no one wanted to see broken:

That’s just nauseating — 478 man games lost. And they’ll lose a few more with the remaining two games.

I don’t even have a list, so I know I won’t be able to list every player and his number of games lost. However, starting with the beginning of the season, I can talk a little bit about what the Avalanche missed when they lost all those man games.

Bottom Lines

Colorado Avalanche centre Jesse Winchester was meant for a two-way role on the bottom six. Mandatory Credit: Candice Ward-USA TODAY Sports

In the summer, the Colorado Avalanche acquired center Jesse Winchester specifically for depth in the bottom six. The Avs seemed to prize him for his hard work and his good defensive instincts.

Winchester suffered a concussion in the preseason and never played a regular season game with the Avs. The Avalanche were forced to make adaptations, such as stuffing the bottom-six with extra young ‘uns and placing proposed 13th forward Marc-Andre Cliche on the third line.

Speaking of the youngsters, forward Dennis Everberg missed almost three weeks with a shoulder injury. From training camp Everberg was Roy’s choice for the bottom-six rookie because of his offensive spark.

A similarly skilled player, Borna Rendulic, was even showing good chemistry with Everberg. However, he suffered a broken leg that ended his season.

Joey Hishon even missed a few games with elbow and neck injuries, thus depriving the Avs of his offensive spark.

Energy player Patrick Bordeleau played seven minutes of one game, first recovering from back surgery and then healing after a knee injury incurred in that seven minutes. Bordeleau is big and intimidating, a decent fourth line forward.

That’s not all the third and fourth line forwards who have been out this season, but those were some of the key players.

Transitional Players

The Colorado Avalanche have missed winger Jamie McGinn’s work in front of the net. Mandatory Credit: Chris Humphreys-USA TODAY Sports

Two losses that had a definite detriment on the Avs’ season are John Mitchell and Jamie McGinn. Both these players are transitional forwards who can play top-six or bottom-six.

John Mitchell missed the beginning of the season with lingering vision problems stemming from his concussion last season. He didn’t return until two weeks in. He missed an additional two weeks with a knee injury.

Mitchell is a natural center who is good on the faceoffs — he led the team in faceoffs at times in the season. He’s also a physical player who can nonetheless score. Likewise, he can even play wing, as he’s doing now on Matt Duchene’s line. Mitchell was gone at the beginning of the year, when the Avs were struggling to get their game going.

Jamie McGinn was in a similar situation. He missed the entire preseason while still recovering from a summer shoulder injury. He returned for 19 games just to suffer a back injury. He had to undergo surgery for the back injury, and he’s been out since mid-November.

McGinn is another transitional player who sees time on both the third line and top lines — he’s often Duchene’s winger. He’s got a wicked one-timer, and he’s good on the power play. The power play — something with which the Avs have struggled this season.

Prognosis

Mar 25, 2015; Edmonton, Alberta, CAN; Colorado Avalanche forward Joey Hishon (38) skates against the Edmonton Oilers at Rexall Place. Mandatory Credit: Perry Nelson-USA TODAY Sports

As Team USA discovered last year in the Olympics, putting a bunch of stars together does not necessarily make for a winning team. You’ve got to have some stars, but your bread and butter guys are your, well, bread and butter.

Your depth forwards need to grind the opposition down. They need to get the puck positioned well for faceoffs, which the top lines can then take. They can draw penalties and sometimes even get the emotion going with a well-timed hit or fight. And they should score a few goals.

The Avalanche did not have the depth forwards they anticipated this season. Coach Roy wanted to have an energy line and a try out line for a couple youngsters. He wanted players he could count on for two-way and defensive play. He did not have the complement of players he wanted.

As far as Mitchell and McGinn go — those were big losses. The Avs were lucky they were without Mitchell’s transitional skills for only a little while. They were counting on McGinn, though. They were counting on his transitional abilities, his one-timer, his power play skill.

Having key players on the bottom-six and two transitional players lost to injury for significant portions of the season cost the Colorado Avalanche. It cannot be said that their lost season is due to these losses, but… it was a big contributing factor.

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