Colorado Avalanche: Evaluating Bold Predictions for 2019-2020 Season

The Colorado Avalanche did a pretty good job of meeting some level of my predictions despite the pandemic-shortened season.

The Colorado Avalanche regular season is over — it was officially over a week ago when the NHL declared it wouldn’t finish the rest of the regular season. So, it’s time to do my end-of-season post.

Every year I write a post with some bold predictions for what the team’s season will look like. Sometimes I’m spot on, sometimes not so much. Here’s the one I wrote for the 2019-20 season:

No, “The season ends prematurely because of a pandemic” was not one of my predictions. It may be in the future, though.

I did have some ideas about what the season would look like — in some cases what I wanted it to look like. Let’s see how accurate I was.

Mikko Rantanen will Regress this Season

Winger Mikko Rantanen held out, thus missing the entire preseason, and is now the highest-paid player on the team. It was almost guaranteed he’d regress. I got even more in-depth with my prediction — 20+ goals and “just” 70 points.

Unfortunately, Rantanen went down not once but twice with injuries. In fact, he finished the regular season in injured reserve. In all, he played just 42 of the team’s 70 games. As such, he earned just 41 points — 19 goals and 22 assists. He came close to the goals mark at least.

Did he regress, though? Let’s look at his points-per-game statistic. This season, he earned .97 points per game. Last season, he earned 87 points in 74 games, or 1.17 points per game. So, yes, he regressed a little.

Nathan MacKinnon will Crack 100 Points

Our superstar and team MVP, Nathan MacKinnon, was just one point shy of the 100-point mark last season. I predicted he’d crack that ceiling this year.

Well, the truncated season cost him, of course. He played all 82 games last season to get to 99 points. He only played 69 games this season. What’s more, he’d just gone down with an injury and was likely to miss a couple weeks.

Nonetheless, in those 69 games, he still accumulated 93 points. That’s 1.34 points per game. So, he only needed to play five more games to crack that mark — and with 12 games left in the season, he might just have made it.

Pavel Francouz will Make 20+ Starts

Goalie Pavel Francouz came into this season as a 29-year-old first-year player with two NHL games to his name. I predicted he’d get a respectable 20 starts.

He recorded 31 starts, just five fewer than ostensible starter Philipp Grubauer. Bold prediction crushed.

Tyson Jost will Score 20 Goals

Tyson Jost was on a roll when the season prematurely ended, but he wasn’t going to record 20 goals. But we’re going to continue supporting him. Full stop.

The Colorado Avalanche will be Top 3 in the Central Division

The last two seasons of the Avalanche making the playoffs saw them doing so as a wild card. So, I predicted they’d be seeded this year.

At the premature end of the season, Colorado was 42-20-8 with 92 points. That was good for second in the Central Divison. So, that prediction was correct.

Altitude TV will be Broadcast on Internet TV

Lost in the crazy COVID-19 storyline was the fact that Altitude TV still didn’t have a contract with two of the major three carriers in Denver. One carrier, DirecTV, finally started showing them. Neither Comcast nor Dish picked them up.

And they did not start broadcasting (legitimately) on the internet.

Cale Makar will Win the Calder Trophy

This prediction is up for grabs. Cale Makar finished three points behind Quinn Hughes for rookie scoring but with 11 fewer games. Which player a fan says deserves to win the Calder Trophy tells you which team they prefer.

I’m Team Makar all the way. You can’t spell Calder without Cale.

Well, Colorado Avalanche fans, players can return to team facilities starting Monday. It looks pretty good we’ll have a postseason at least. As the time gets closer, I may even post a new set of bold predictions for the playoffs.

I might even include a Jumani-esque prediction like murder hornets or rising cicada.