Colorado Avalanche Quarter Season Review: Above .500 Hockey

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.