Colorado Avalanche Quarter Season Review: Above .500 Hockey

At the quarter-point mark of the season, the Colorado Avalanche are at .500 hockey.

The Colorado Avalanche are always going to have their ups and downs. That’s probably true of any team, but I’ve come to the realization that the Avalanche will never be consistent. They’re just too mercurial.

That said, the headline makes the biggest point — they’re above .500 hockey. At the time of writing, they had a 10-8-1 record for 21 points, with a +1 goal differential.

The Avalanche have had a weird schedule. They’ve had four four-day breaks between games — and only two of those were because of the Global Series Games in Sweden. They’ve also already had five back-to-back series. It’s hard to get into a rhythm when you’re not playing a regular style schedule — the players often state they like the every-other or every-two day rhythm.

The Colorado Avalanche are currently the second-youngest team with an average age of 25.5. That’s a lot of youth — indeed, the team is in an unofficially offical youth movement. Coach Jared Bednar has even remarked that they want the team to “grow up” together.

Well, there are always going to be growing pains. As the Colorado Avalanche settle into their rebuild-cum-youth movement, let’s see how they’re doing around the quarter-point of the season.

Team Leaders

At the time of writing, Nathan MacKinnon was the scoring leader with 22 points (7 goals, 15 assists). He also leads the team in assists. For goals, he’s tied for second place with rookie Alexander Kerfoot. The captain, Gabriel Landeskog, leads the team with eight goals.

Here’s the top 5 points leaders:

1. Nathan MacKinnon (22)
2. Mikko Rantanen (17)
3. Tyson Barrie (16)
4. Gabriel Landeskog (15)
5. Alexander Kerfoot (15)

MacKinnon and Barrie are tied for first place for game-winning goals with two each. For power play goals, the rank is as follows:

1. Mikko Rantanen (10)
2. Nathan MacKinnon (8)
3. Tyson Barrie (6)
4. Alexander Kerfoot (5)
5. Sven Andrighetto (4)

Unfortunately, with Matt Duchene gone, Colorado is falling behind in faceoff wins — he was above 50%. Without Duchene, Carl Soderberg has been the best faceoff center, winning 39.9% followed by Colin Wilson (38.7%) and Nathan MacKinnon (38.2). Rookie Dominic Toninato has only played two games, but he’s won 9 of 17 faceoffs for 52.9% — here’s hoping he stays with the team and keeps that stat up.

Goal Tending

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The Colorado Avalanche have a decent goal tending tandem in Semyon Varlamov and Jonathan Bernier. Varlamov is the number-one with Bernier being a summer acquisition as backup.

In 12 games, Varlamov has a 7-4-1 record — he was the goalie in net when the Ottawa Senators beat the Avalanche in overtime. That said, he was also the goalie in net who prevented the Philadelphia Flyers from winning in the shootout by stopping two of the three shootout attempts he faced.

Varlamov has a .903 save percentage, which is decent. His 3.23 goals against average isn’t fabulous. However, this is a goalie who continues to face in the neighborhood of 33 shots a game.

The front offices and coaching staff don’t want Varlamov to play more than 50 games this season. Therefore, they’ve developed a rotation that has seen backup Jonathan Bernier already get seven starts. He has a 3-4-0 record, which isn’t fantastic. However, he was the goalie on the ice for the Detroit overtime, and he made important saves that let Colorado go on to win.

Bernier’s save percentage isn’t great, .886. His goals against average is only a little worse than Varlamov’s at 3.59. He faces an average of 27 shots per game.

In the wings, the Colorado Avalanche also have Spencer Martin and Joe Cannata, with the latter playing mostly with the Colorado Eagles right now thanks to the weird sharing of the San Antonio Rampage with the St. Louis Blues.

They also have Andrew Hammond under contract as part of the Matt Duchene trade, but he’s been kept with the Ottawa Senators’ AHL affiliate. It’s understood Colorado would like to trade him, likely for a draft pick. However, the Rampage roster is also full thanks to that dual sharing.

Though Cannata traveled with the team to Sweden as emergency backup during the Global Series Games, it’s understood that Martin is the first call-up for goal tending.

Power Play

The Colorado Avalanche power play has been one of the biggest ups and downs on the season. Before Nail Yakupov scored his third-period goal against the Detroit Red Wings, Colorado had gone 0-12 on the power play.

For the season so far, they’re middle of the pack, right at #15 with a 19.7% accuracy. They’ve scored 15 goals in 76 games. They’ve also allowed two short-handed goals against.

The team has tried different configurations of the power play. For quite a while, though, they tried the following units:

Nathan MacKinnon-Gabriel Landeskog-Mikko Rantanen-Alexander Kerfoot
Tyson Barrie

Matt Duchene/Colin Wilson-Nail Yakupov-Sven Andrighetto-Carl Soderberg
Erik Johnson

During the road trip to first Nashville then Detroit, they started rotating the defenseman on the power play by throwing Samuel Girard into the mix. Erik Johnson is getting less power play time.

I’m not a fan of keeping Johnson off the power play. I’m not saying this is related, but once they started rotating Girard in, that’s when the team went 1-14 on the power play. To my mind, it’s more that Johnson is a better power play quarterback than Barrie, who is Swiss cheese on the blueline during the power play. Barrie would be better off playing in a forward position with either Johnson or Girard on the point.

Case in point, that one goal that went in on the power play? Johnson earned the primary assist.

Penalty Kill

The Colorado Avalanche penalty kill has also been up and down. At one point, their penalty killing was almost their best play.

At the time of writing, though, the Avalanche were #27 in the NHL with a penalty kill percentage of 76.7%. They’ve allowed 17 goals in 73 short-handed situations. That said, Colorado has three short-handed goals, which ties them for second place with nine other teams.

Since defensemen are primary penalty killers, and the Avalanche defensemen are a rotating cast, it’s hard to nail down their power play unit.

However, Erik Johnson is naturally their biggest penalty killer for defensemen. When he plays, Nikita Zadorov is often with him. When they play, Mark Barberio and Chris Bigras have seen some PK time, too. Tyson Barrie will get a few seconds on the PK now and again, which is bizarre.

For forwards, you see a lot of Blake Comeau, Carl Soderberg and Matthew Nieto on the PK. Gabriel Landeskog and J.T. Compher also do tours through the PK.

Analysis

As of right now, the Colorado Avalanche are a bubble team for the playoffs. They keep bouncing in and out of the wild card spot. Now that they’re on a more regular schedule, they’re catching up in games played and we’ll get a better feel for what they can do.

I still vacillate on which would be more useful for the Avalanche — making the playoffs or getting a good draft pick. There’s certainly no question that seeing Colorado in the playoffs is more fun. Plus, there’s something to be said for getting these youngsters some playoff experience — especially the likes of MacKinnon and Landeskog, who are striding into their prime and need to learn how to lead in high stakes hockey.

However, the Avalanche are not a team that will go far into the playoffs — it’s highly unlikely they would make it past the first round. They could even get swept. They’re just too young and lacking in the depth pool.

What’s more, this year is heralding a stellar draft class. Defenseman Rasmus Dahlin leads the way with some ridiculously showstopping play. There are four other drool-worthy defensemen currently ranked high:

• Adam Boqvist
• Quinn Hughes
• Jared McIsaac
• Bode Wilde

Three forwards are also distinguishing themselves:

• Andrei Svechnikov
• Filip Zadina
• Brady Tkachuk

Naturally I would love to see Colorado get some draft karma back and win the first-overall pick — but they can only do that if they don’t make the playoffs.

Next: Bold Predictions for the Avs' 2017-18 Season

Whether or not the Colorado Avalanche make the playoffs this season, I hope they keep shrugging off the stink of last season. If the first 19 games of this season are any indication — and they are — this is not the same downtrodden team that only won 22 games last year.

So, my ultimate hope for the current inception of the team is they stay as competitive as they have in the first 19 games of the season. Maybe they make the playoffs, maybe they win the Rasmus Dahlin Sweepstakes — but hopefully they stay true to their identity through the next quarter of the season and beyond.