Heading into Tuesday against the Islanders, the Colorado Avalanche are near the bottom of the league in terms of power play efficiency. At 20.5 percent success rate, they are 19th. They need to get this unit going a lot more consistently than they are.
One of the team’s recent games showered me that there appears to be a chance that the unit can get on a hot streak after the addition of Martin Necas from the Carolina Hurricanes. It was the best power play we’ve seen from this team in quite some time and that’s extremely encouraging. I happened to search X for similar opinions and they were everywhere. If I’m not mistaken, Necas had three shots on net during one of them.
One thing I found interesting while searching up some statistics outside of the regular goals and assists was Necas’ speed. According to NHL Edge, Necas has the fastest speed of any skater this season with 24.49 mph. That’s the type of thing that the Avalanche want and need in order to play quality hockey with the likes of Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar.
Another thing that caught my attention is the point efficiency from Necas on power plays. Per StatMuse, Necas has 23 power-play points this year, which includes seven goals. Based off of this and what looks to be quick chemistry, I think that Necas has a very strong chance of being the leader on the team’s power play unit for the remainder of the season.
To further that point, MacKinnon leads the league in 22+ mph bursts this season with 58 and 20+ mph bursts with 370. The latter is 98 bursts more than second place (Connor McDavid).
As the Avalanche take on the Islanders Tuesday, I decided to check where New York ranks in terms of penalty kill efficiency. What I saw made me excited for Tuesday’s game. The Islanders rank dead last on penalty kills at 68.3 percent. Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the Avalanche are going to score, but I do like their chances of getting shots on net. Eventually, those shots are going to translate to goals and we can expect the Avalanche to get out of this unfortunate slump.