After a resurgent year in which the Colorado Avalanche shocked the hockey world and won the highly competitive Central Division, expectations were sky high for the club’s second season under head coach Patrick Roy.
Unfortunately, after an offseason of fine tuning under the management of Avalanche legends coach Roy and Joe Sakic, the club has been wildly disappointing in the second season of the #AvsNewAge. Currently on a three-game losing streak, the team is again sitting all alone at the bottom of the Central Division.
The Avalanche defense has taken much of the blame for the club’s struggles. And they have rightfully earned their fair share of negative attention.
The bigger issue, however, has been a massive drop off in scoring by the entirety of the club’s talented, young offensive core. The youngsters were all expected to progress in the offseason and take their games to the next level; that hasn’t happened. Yet.
If the Avalanche really want to make a push for the playoffs, they are going to need their young core to return to their scoring form of last year.
Through 54 games last season, the Avalanche tallied 165 goals. In the same number of games this season, the club has generated a paltry 137 goals. The 28-goal difference equates to a drop off of more than a half of a goal per contest. That puts the Avalanche at 25th in the league with 2.41 goals per game; last season, they were fourth the league with 2.99 goals per game.
This helps to explain how the Avalanche have fallen to 13-9-11 (.394 winning percentage) in one-goal games this season after putting together the league’s best record in one-goal games last season at 28-4-8 (.700 winning percentage). Plus, Colorado has already been shutout eight times – a ghastly 14.8 percent of their games – after only being held of the scoreboard one time all of last season.
So, where has all the offense gone?
The Avs’ young nucleus – Gabriel Landeskog, Matt Duchene, Ryan O’Reilly and Nathan MacKinnon – have all seen their offensive numbers drop off significantly from last season.
Through the Avs’ 54th game last year, Duchene had 17 goals with 30 assists for 47 points. This season, the 24-year-old would-be star has played in three more games, but dropped off to 14 goals and 33 points at the same point in the season.
“I just have to stay with it,” Duchene told Terry Frei of The Denver Post. “I’m putting in the effort, and it’s one of those years where things aren’t coming as easy as they have other years. The only way you can handle it is to keep working, and that’s something I can say I’ve done.”
Landeskog’s story is much of the same – 16 goals and 43 points to 10 goals and 31 points over the same stretch. And O’Reilly has fallen off the map – 20 goals last year at this point and currently only 10 goals this season.
As for the Avalanche’s Calder Trophy winner, he is suffering the dreaded sophomore slump. MacKinnon is struggling with everything. Last season, he always seemed to be the fastest person on the ice; this year, the game looks too fast for MacKinnon.
Combined, the four forwards account for a 30-goal drop off from last season. It’s not a coincidence that the team as a whole is similarly 28 goals behind last season’s pace. Remarkably, the rest of the team has actually scored two more goals than they did to this point last season, while the star quartet has scored just 58.9 percent of the goals that they had.
At the root of the offensive issues is the club’s inept power play – which is currently on a drought of 28 straight opportunities without a goal. The Avs’ 29th-ranked power play is converting on just 12.4 percent of their chances this season, after they finished last year with the league’s fifth best power play unit.
Not surprisingly, the deficiencies with the power play coincide with the club’s young core’s offensive woes.
Last season, Duchene, MacKinnon and O’Reilly all tallied 11 power play points through the team’s first 54 games. This time around, Duchene has a simply unacceptable two power play points, while MacKinnon and O’Reilly have each slowed to just seven points with the man advantage.
The offensive regression of Landeskog, Duchene, O’Reilly and MacKinnon isn’t the only reason the Avalanche are 20 points behind last year’s pace. But it’s hard to overstate the negative effect of their decline.
If the Avalanche hope to make the playoffs, these four need to start finding the back of the net. That said, it might be to little to late, as the hole Duchene, Landeskog, MacKinnon and O’Reilly have created might have pushed the playoffs out of reach.
