Wow, what a rough two months it’s been for the Colorado Avalanche. Or, perhaps a more accurate judgment would be this: What a rough two months it’s been for the Avs in the net. Recently, Colorado faced and beat the Buffalo Sabres, and it never would have happened had they not pulled goaltender Alexandar Georgiev.
Seriously, Georgiev is single-handedly the reason behind the Avalanche’s struggles this season, and if they had a better goaltender, literally, Tristan Jarry or Ville Husso would be better than Georgiev at this point, then fate knows where this team would be.
Competing for first place in the Central Division alongside the Winnipeg Jets and Minnesota Wild? Honestly, I wouldn’t put it past them. With 86 goals for, the Avs are seventh in the league, but an ugly 30th with 97 allowed. Yeah, it’s pretty easy to pinpoint the problem.
See, the Avs are a strange team to grade, because they’re still, amidst bad netminding, surefire playoff contenders. They’re a good overall hockey team, but as dangerous as they are up front, they won’t notch anything other than above average at the rate they’re going.
Colorado Avalanche are in a no-win long-term situation right now
Other than their goaltending, I’d give this team a resounding ‘A’ across their first two months of the season. It’s an easy ‘A,’ and as long as they can keep scoring almost at will, the Avs will be in the playoffs come April. But they won’t make it past the first round if they don’t do something about their goaltending, which deserves nothing other than an ‘F.’
Yeah, so when you put two and two together, the Avs get a ‘C,’ and it’s an unfair ‘C.’ I’ve talked about hockey teams playing an average game, teams at or slightly below 0.500, and have given them a ‘C.’ The Avs deserve a better overall grade than this because, when 100 percent healthy, there’s hardly a deeper lineup of skaters anywhere in the NHL.
This should be a simple solution for everyone involved in this team’s front office: Go find even a halfway decent goalie, and this team will go from just over 0.500 in points to snagging something along the line of a 0.650 points percentage once they fix this issue.
Until then, I’m not holding my breath that they’ll be any better than the fourth-best team in the NHL’s Central Division. And that number could get even bleaker if the St. Louis Blues figure things out under Jim Montgomery.