A Look Back: How did the Avalanche get here?

With their devastating loss to the Minnesota Wild yesterday, the odds of the Colorado Avalanche making the playoffs dropped dramatically.  14.5%, to be exact.  With only 7 games remaining, all of which are against playoff caliber teams, the Avalanche currently have only a 5.1% chance of making the playoffs.  That doesn’t sound too promising, does it?  After all, just two games ago, after beating the Edmonton Oilers, they were being given a 50.1% chance of making it into the postseason.  So, what happened?  How did the Avalanche get into a position where the odds are stacked against them to make the playoffs?

The Avalanche, without both Nathan MacKinnon and Matt Duchene, were able to beat the worst team in the Western Conference, the Oilers, but failed to pick up any points in important games against the Philadelphia Flyers or the Wild.  Some people would like to look to those injuries as a big reason why the Avs, in all likelihood, will be sitting at home when the playoffs start for the fifth time in six seasons.  The fact of the matter is, the Avalanche have no one to blame but themselves for being in the position they are currently in.

Injuries

Since we’re discussing injuries, we should probably get this out of the way: The Avs, all things considered, have had some pretty good luck with injuries this season.  Up until the MacKinnon and Duchene injuries, the only major players to miss any significant time with injuries were Erik Johnson and Semyon Varlamov.  The team managed to go 6-3 without Johnson, and Reto Berra filled in admirably during Varlamov’s absence in November.

As of March 26, the Avalanche had lost 276 man games to injury, which is in the top 10.  However, a lot of those games lost belong to two players: Jesse Winchester and Brad Stuart, neither of which would have played major roles on this team.  Winchester, as we all know, hasn’t been able to play a game for the Avs since signing in the summer of 2014 because of concussion problems.  Stuart has managed to only play 6 games this year, as he’s missed most of the season with a back injury.

The timing of the MacKinnon and Duchene injuries are less than ideal, but injuries are not the reason the Avs are where they are.

Early Season Struggles

For the second straight season, the Avs put themselves in a deep hole right off the bat.  The opening night collapse against the Wild was just the beginning, as they were just 4-9-1 before heading on their massive 7 game road trip in the middle of November.  They somehow managed to get back into the playoff race, partly through their own turn around and partly through a good portion of the Western Conference being mediocre.  The Avalanche have hit slumps since that slow start, but if they manage to miss the playoffs, the slow start will no doubt haunt them.

Struggles Against Bad Teams

If you’re going to be a playoff team, you have to beat the teams that you should beat, and the Avalanche had major issues with that against some bad teams this year.  Against four of the bottom feeders in the Eastern Conference (Columbus, Toronto, Buffalo, Carolina), the Avalanche managed to pick up only 3 of a possible 16 points.  They also struggled against the Vancouver Canucks, one of the worst teams in the Western Conference, picking up only 2 of the possible 6 points against them.  The Avs are most certainly not one of the top teams in the NHL, but these are teams that you should be able to pick up more points against, and just a few more wins against those teams could have changed the course of this season.

Third Period Meltdowns

The opening night disaster against the Wild set an unfortunate tone for the rest of the season, as the Avs have been a team that has struggled to play with a lead late in games, and has failed to get many games in which they were tied in the third period to overtime for at least a point.  Let’s take a look at the games in which the Avs were either leading or tied in the 3rd period, and failed to pick up a single point in.

• October 8 – at home against the Minnesota Wild (leading)
• October 24 – at home against the Columbus Blue Jackets (leading)
• November 1 – at home against the San Jose Sharks (tied)
• November 30 – on the road against the New York Islanders (tied)
• December 9 – at home against the Pittsburgh Penguins (leading)
• December 21 – at home against the Toronto Maple Leafs (tied)
• January 16 – on the road against the Columbus Blue Jackets (tied)
• February 27 – at home against the Detroit Red Wings (leading)
• March 5 – at home against the Nashville Predators (leading)
• March 12 – on the road against the Winnipeg Jets (leading)
• March 24 – at home against the Philadelphia Flyers (leading)

What’s the most disturbing part about these blown chances?  8 of these 11 games happened at the Pepsi Center, in front of the home crowd.  It’s not like these games are more prominent at any one point in the season than another, either.  It’s been a consistent issue for the team, with at least one occurring in every single month of the season.  When the Avs get the lead, they play differently, and both the eye test and numbers back this up.  They don’t pressure teams on the forecheck, they don’t look to make plays offensively, and most of their shifts are spent pinned in their own end.  In the end, these 11 games will likely be the biggest reason why the Avs are on the outside looking in when the playoffs start next month.

It would be easy to look at the last two games without their top two scorers as the final nail in the coffin for the Avs season, but when you take a look back, the issues that plagued this team on opening night have stuck around all year, and are the biggest reasons the Avs in the position they are currently in.