The Colorado Avalanche are bad right now, but they’re not the worst in Colorado sports history or even franchise history.
Colorado Avalanche fans might feel like they’re staring into an abyss. We hear over and over about how bad the team is, worst in the salary cap era, going to finish significantly lower than the #29 team.
Well, it is bad. Coach Mike Babcock once famously said “There’s pain coming” about the Toronto Maple Leafs rebuild. While neither Jared Bednar nor Joe Sakic warned of the pain we’d be feeling, it’s there.
However, the team isn’t the worst we’ve ever seen in Denver, and this current inception isn’t even the worst in franchise history.
Recently Mile High Sports wrote an article about the Colorado Avalanche season. It put the team as on pace to get 23 wins and 49 total points, which would be good for a .296 win percentage.
Well, the sainted Denver Broncos have been worse. In 1982, they got just two wins in nine games (shortened season), which resulted in a .222 win percentage. They also got to draft John Elway after that.
There was even worse in a previous generation (1963-64) when they got just two wins and 11 losses for a .143 win percentage. There was no Elway at the end of that tunnel.
The Denver Nuggets have seen worse in their history. The 2002-03 team recorded just 17 wins and 65 losses for a .207 win percentage. At the conclusion of the 1949-50 season, the Nuggets had 11 wins and 51 losses. a .177 win percentage.
The 1997-98 Denver Nuggets were the worst professional sports team in Denver or Colorado history. They got just 11 wins in 82 games, which was a .134 win percentage.
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At the time of writing, Colorado had 20 wins and 43 points, which is a .298 win percentage.
That’s ugly. That’s so far under 500 hockey that it isn’t even funny. However, the 1989-90 Quebec Nordiques were much worse. They got just 12 wins and 31 total points in 80 games (.193 win percentage). Now that’s painful. The next two years weren’t much better: 16 wins and 46 points (.287) 20 wins and 52 points (.32).
At least as far as overall wins go, Colorado has bettered any of those records. Don’t go down the road of noticing those Nordiques seasons were three years in a row — next year will be far better than even 52 points, right?
Indeed, the Hockey News recently concluded that at least four teams were farther away than the Colorado Avalanche from winning a Stanley Cup — Detroit Red Wings, Vancouver Canucks, New Jersey Devils and Los Angeles Kings (poor Jarome Iginla).
The rationale was that the Avalanche, along with the Arizona Coyotes, were already going through their painful rebuild while the downfall and pain of the other four teams was in the future.
The article also surmised that the Colorado Avalanche had an express ticket out of the abyss — trading Matt Duchene and/or Gabriel Landeskog for key rebuild pieces, specifically defensemen.
Now, I’m not a proponent of that path. I have explored it:
However, to me it makes no sense for a team that struggles so hard to generate goals (currently -98 for goal differential) to trade one or two of its top goal scorers.
That said, I think the team isn’t as far off as their record shows. Joe Sakic, et al., took a sharp right turn last summer in the vision of the team. He made some key changes in targeted player types, going from big, gritty, skilled and speedy to small, speedy skilled and analytics oriented.
That means the current roster is comprised both of the old type and the new type of player. As the team sheds some of that old type and a handful of journeymen to replace them with youngsters, we should see a roster that can complement the current core.
Until that time, just console yourself with the fact that this current Colorado Avalanche team isn’t the worst this city or this franchise has ever seen.