Apart from the Colorado Avalanche's unceremonious sweep at the hands of the Vegas Golden Knights in the 2026 Western Conference Finals, the biggest shortcoming from the Avs' President's Trophy-winning 2025-26 season was their abysmal power play production. For a team as offensively-capable as the Avalanche, their difficulty to score when up a man was confounding to many and frustrating to the team and the front office.
It's easy to highlight this negative component from an otherwise-stellar season; it is the one glaring sore spot from a season that, by its conclusion, featured a wealth of individual honors and the recognition of numerous Avs players' contributions last season:
Award | Qualification | Winner(s) |
|---|---|---|
The Maurice "Rocket" Richard Trophy | Presented “to the player finishing the regular season as the League’s goal-scoring leader" | Nathan MacKinnon |
The William M. Jennings Trophy | Presented “to the goaltender(s)... with the fewest goals scored against... during the regular season" | Mackenzie Blackwood & Scott Wedgewood |
The Bill Masterton Memorial Trophy | Presented “to the player who best exemplifies the qualities of perseverance, sportsmanship and dedication to hockey" | Gabriel Landeskog |
The Mark Messier NHL Leadership Award | Presented “to the player who exemplifies great leadership qualities to his team, on and off the ice, during the regular season and who plays a leading role in his community growing the game of hockey" | Gabriel Landeskog |
Additionally, there were plenty of nominations that didn't result in any additional hardware:
Award | Qualification | Avs Finalist/Nominee | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|
The Hart Memorial Trophy | Presented “to the player adjudged to be the most valuable to his team" | Nathan MacKinnon | Nikita Kucherov |
The James Norris Memorial Trophy | Presented “to the defense player who demonstrates throughout the season the greatest all-round ability in the position" | Cale Makar | Zach Werenski |
The Frank J. Selke Trophy | Presented “to the forward who best excels in the defensive aspects of the game" | Brock Nelson | Nick Suzuki |
The King Clancy Memorial Trophy | Presented “to the player who best exemplifies leadership qualities on and off the ice and has made a noteworthy humanitarian contribution in his community" | Sam Malinski | Marcus Foligno |
*Jim Gregory GM of the Year | Presented “to the League’s most outstanding general manager" | Chris MacFarland | Bill Guerin |
Why bother mentioning all of this in an article about the team's power play? Simple: There was no shortage of individual achievements last season; this, however, serves as a fitting, microcosmic explanation for the team's struggle to produce on the power play. There was an overabundance of individual talent — namely by MacKinnon, Landeskog, Makar, and Nelson (all of whom played on either the first or second power play unit last year) — but this did not automatically translate to chemistry and team success, as evidenced by the man-advantage struggles and the team's collapse in the Western Conference Finals. In short, there were too many cooks in the kitchen, proverbially speaking.
A Brief, Statistical Breakdown of the 2025-26 Man Advantage Struggles
Despite possessing no shortage of lethality and scoring prowess, the Avs' power play last season was atrocious. The team's conversion rate when on the man advantage was 17.1%, which ranked 27th in the league. In addition to that, the team allowed 13 short-handed goals against, which was the most by any team in the league during the 2025-26 regular season (and is tied for the third-worst in Avalanche history). While the Avs' power play production did marginally increase during the playoffs (up to a conversion rate of 20.6%), it dipped back down to a combined 10% in the Western Conference Finals.
While ranking 27th in the league, on its own, is rather jarring, when looked at within the context of the Avs' status quo of the past five seasons, it is so atypical that one has to imagine things will improve in the 2026-27 season:
Season | PP% | League Rank |
|---|---|---|
2021-22 | 24.0% | 7th |
2022-23 | 24.5% | 6th |
2023-24 | 24.5% | 5th |
2024-25 | 24.8% | 8th |
2025-26 | 17.1% | 27th |
That being said, no one could have predicted it would be at the bottom of the NHL last season, so some changes, either to manpower, strategy, or both, are needed.
Side note: The one silver lining to the Avs giving up tons of shorthanded goals is that in 1995-96, when the team won its first Stanley Cup, the Avs allowed 22 of them, which is tied for the most a team has ever given up in a single season. So, optimistically, perhaps there is a correlation between championship-winning and shorthanded-goal-allowing?
Enter T.J. Hughes
After two games to kick off this season, the Avs' power play seems to be off and running in the right direction in terms of production, but a pair of short-handed goals allowed during their season opener against the Los Angeles Kings showed a worrisome continuation of a major issue from 2025-26. The coaching staff and front office will be careful not to upend the entire identity of the Avs' man advantage lines, likely hoping that much of last season was anomalous and in need of tweaking, not destruction; however, a team with as much offensive upside as the Avalanche simply has to do better when on the power play this season. With this in mind, there is only one major change to the Avs' man-advantage identity: T.J. Hughes.
Hughes' inclusion on the Avs' opening-night roster was easily the biggest surprise coming out of training camp, especially considering the Avs' AHL affiliate, the Colorado Eagles, has a number of other NHL-caliber players on its roster. He hasn't looked out of place, though, which is a credit to the player and the Avs' front office for trusting Hughes to manage the pressure that comes with being on a line with Nathan MacKinnon, Cale Makar, Gabriel Landeskog, and Martin Nečas.
While Hughes has not factored in on the score sheet yet (apart from registering a penalty in defense of Cale Makar), his inclusion on the Avs' first power play unit is still impacting the Avs' early-season man-advantage success: Hughes' utilization in the bumper position of PP1 gives the Avs one of the most talented second power play units in the entire NHL; the quintet of Jaden Schwartz, Nazem Kadri, Artturi Lehkonen, Devon Toews, and Brock Nelson could easily be most other teams' top power play unit, and this mismatch has, thus far in 2026-27, been a major advantage for the Avs.
Of the four power play conversions that the Avs have so far this season, three of them (one goal by Brock Nelson and two by Artturi Lehkonen) have come via the second unit. Hughes has also, merely through his inclusion on the top power play unit, immediately changed the look and feel of the Avs' power play, which, as of now, has been to the team's overall benefit.
Without even scoring a goal or recording an assist, Hughes has still found a way to help the Avs shake things up on special teams, and this experiment, at least at this point — 1/41st of the way through the season —is bearing fruit. As depth options like Zachary L'Heureux and Logan O'Connor get healthy and begin filling out the Avs' bottom-six, it will be interesting to see if Hughes can keep his spot in the lineup, and, if not, how that might disrupt the current momentum the Avs have while on the power play.
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