The Colorado Avalanche have been dominating nearly every facet of the NHL in 2025-26. They're first in points with 48, first in goals scored and goals allowed with 115 and 63, respectively, and they're second in the NHL in penalty-kill percentage, behind only the Buffalo Sabres.
When you're leading the league in goals, your power play needs to be near the top, of the league. Unfortunately for the Avs, it's 23rd, with a meager 16.00 conversion rate. Their inability to play well on the man advantage, despite players like Nathan MacKinnon, Martin Necas, and Cale Makar in the lineup, could reveal a major weakness.
That's a weakness opponents could capitalize on, as it could further expose potential pitfalls in the Avs' 5-on-5 game. Should opponents apply similar strategies against the Avalanche at 5-on-5 that they do while they are on the power play, this could ultimately lead to regression toward the median as the season wears on.
Colorado Avalanche must find a way to fix their power play
The good news is that the Avalanche have some of the best players in the game and a surefire Hart Trophy candidate in Nathan MacKinnon leading the charge. This indicates the Avs have a better chance to righten the ship on their power play, and that would force opponents to keep trying to find ways to figure out how to slow them down.
Even if opponents applied a similar strategy to the Avalanche at 5-on-5, Colorado is too good a team to regress for long. Still, they must find ways to keep their momentum going with midseason drawing nearer.
The Avalanche know how to score at will, so why not inject that same high-octane play when they're at 5-on-4? Or, if for whatever reason the Avalanche's power-play units don't mesh as well, then they need to keep mixing them up and changing things around until they build chemistry.
Avalanche would be unstoppable if they figure out special teams
Having scored 115 goals, and just 16 coming on the power play, the question is: What would the Avalanche look like offensively if they improved their power play percentage to around 20 percent?
With the way they draw penalties, even the most defensive-oriented teams would have a tough time trying to stop Colorado's onslaught, and they would need to revert to something the New York Islanders did in their recent win over Colorado, which involved preventing the Avalanche's blueliners from taking point-shots.
But the Islanders still needed to score four-plus goals to beat the Avs. So, if Colorado figured out its power play and started scoring on it at a rapid pace, as they do at 5-on-5, the only real way for opponents to beat them might involve finding creative ways to score on them. Hard forechecking and creating chaos around the net could be their only chance to remotely keep pace with Colorado.
The Avs must figure out this power play since it would all but make them the league's most well-rounded and hard-to-stop team. They would also be the surefire first seed come playoff time, so there are a ton of benefits to fixing the man advantage right now.