Avalanche Must Learn from Lightning's Rise

At the end of the 2014 NHL season, the Avalanche and Lightning were a mirrored pair. Both teams were young, talented, and playoff surprises thanks to the explosive offense generated by their young stars. Both teams suffered disappointing first round losses thanks to a lack of defensive talent and depth. Even the team’s general managers were a matching pair: two rival Hall of Famers who both wore #19.

Now, one year later, the two could not be more different. The Lightning have propelled themselves all the way to the Stanley Cup Final, where they now lead the Blackhawks 2-1. Their roster is set to compete for years to come, and they still have a number of exciting prospects set to join the team in the future. The Avalanche, on the other hand, struggled all season with possession, and are headed for their 4th Top 10 draft pick since 2009. They have serious contractual questions about a cornerstone player in Ryan O’Reilly, and after parting with a number of draft picks, their prospect pool is extremely thin.

What went so wrong that these two teams, who both drafted in the Top 3 just two years ago, now find themselves on opposite ends of the standings. This piece won’t go into detail examining the Avalanche’s management missteps in those two years. For an evaluation of Joe Sakic’s tenure as General Manager, check BSN’s move-by-move breakdown of Year 1 and Year 2. Instead, we’ll look at how Tampa Bay facilitated their meteoric rise to the top, and how the Avalanche can replicate it.

The Avalanche’s young talent is undeniable, and their core group of forwards certainly rivals that of the Tampa Bay Lightning. As a group, Matt Duchene, Ryan O’Reilly, Nathan MacKinnon, and Gabriel Landeskog  are strong enough to compete with the very best teams in the NHL. When healthy, the Avalanche can even boast a formidable third line, with players like Jamie McGinn, John Mitchell, and Dennis Everberg.

It would be easy for the Avalanche to be frustrated after watching Tampa Bay’s similarly talented forwards soar past the Avs this season by a total of 43 goals. Everything went right this season for Tampa’s talented young stars, and everything wrong for the Avs’.

There is perhaps no better example of these teams’ diverging paths than that of Nathan MacKinnon and the “Tampa Bay Triplets.” Just one year after losing the Calder Trophy to Nathan MacKinnon, Tyler Johnson and Ondrej Palat are having incredible success on the “triplets line” with fellow youngster Nikita Kucherov. MacKinnon, meanwhile, had a frustrating sophomore season with just 14 goals in 64 games (just one more goal than Johnson has in these playoffs).

In the waning weeks of the 2014-2015 regular season, Patrick Roy and Joe Sakic provided a number of sound bites that wrote off that difference as a result of luck, a slow start, injuries, and lack of experience. Now, with the Stanley Cup Final in full swing, the rallying cry that took the Avalanche to a division championship just last year should be on the front of Joe Sakic’s mind as he watches this once parallel Lightning team succeed: “Why not us?”

Cut through the injuries, narratives, and excuses that decorated the Avalanche’s fruitless 2015 campaign, and instead take the opportunity to learn from GM Steve Yzerman, who fueled his young dynamic offense, by taking aggressive steps to address his team’s defense.

Pound for pound, shot for shot, the Avalanche’s “quartet” of young forwards is every bit as talented as Tampa Bay’s “triplet” line, so why the large differences in offensive production? Plain and simple, to score goals in the NHL, a team has to get the puck out of their zone and up to their forwards. The Avalanche forwards can have all the offensive talent in the world, and it won’t do them any good if they spend most of their shifts chasing the puck in their own zone. It’s a lesson the Tampa Bay Lightning learned when they were swept 4-0 by the Canadiens last season, and one they acted on in a big way.

In Game 3 last night, the Lightning iced an impressive defensive unit that included Victor Hedman, Matt Carle, Anton Stralman, Jason Garrison, Brayden Coburn, and Andreas Sustr. With that wealth of talent, it may be hard to believe that when the Lightning drafted Jonathan Drouin just two years ago, only Hedman, Carle, and Sustr were a part of the organization, with Sustr developing in the AHL. The Lightning returned for the 13-14 season with a few aging stopgaps (much like the Avs have used Hejda, Sarich, and Stuart) and were easily swept aside in the first round.

In the months that followed their disappointing first round exit, Steve Yzerman went to work building a blue line that could adequately support the forward talent he’d cultivated for the Lightning.

In June, at the NHL Entry Draft, Yzerman made his first move, dealing the Lightning’s 2nd round pick for Jason Garrison, a talented defenseman on the outs in Vancouver due to his hefty contract. The Lightning, however, were not afraid to make a big investment in Garrison, and the blue liner with a booming slapshot has since flourished in Tampa, ranking 3rd among Lighting defensemen for time on ice in the playoffs.

Yzerman wasn’t done yet. When free agency rolled around in July, the Lightning snagged one of the classes biggest fish by signing New York Rangers defenseman Anton Stralman. As a late bloomer, Stralman had a limited track record, and this would be his first big money contract, but the Lightning once again made a big investment with a talented, prime age defenseman, and they’ve since reaped the benefits. Matched with Victor Hedman, Stralman is now part of one of the NHL’s most dominant defensive duos and ranks 2nd on the team in time on ice.

Despite the Lightning’s obvious improvement over the course of the regular season, Yzerman went once more unto the breach in search of quality defensive depth for his roster. At the NHL trade deadline, Yzerman swung for the fences by trading quality young defenseman Radko Gudas and the Lightning’s 1st and 3rd round draft picks for Flyers veteran Brayden Coburn. In the months since, Coburn has been an essential part of the Lightning’s penalty kill, and ranks 4th on the team in time on ice.

In the space of 10 months, the Tampa Bay Lightning completely reformed their defensive unit, acquiring 3 of their top 4 time on ice leaders, and establishing organizational depth that is enviable league-wide.

So similar just a year ago, the difference between these two squads on paper is now obvious. With 5 defenseman making $4M or more, the Lightning have allocated 38% of their salary cap to their defense. Add to that, the fact that the oldest Lightning defensemen are 30 years old, and they should have years of efficacy ahead.

The Avalanche meanwhile, pinched pennies on their blueline. At $3.75M annually, Erik Johnson is the team’s highest paid defenseman, and in total the blueline only accounts for 23% of the Avs’ salary cap. The Avs employed three roster regulars on the wrong side of 30, and three roster regulars on non entry level contracts near the league minimum. In this case, they got what they paid for.

There’s no doubt that Tampa Bay’s roster moves on defense were aggressive and even risky, but they could also be the new normal for young NHL clubs with high end forward talent. Even last summer the Lightning weren’t the only ones to make a splash restructuring their rear guard. The Washington Capitals splurged and added both Matt Niskanen and Brooks Orpik from the UFA pool, and the New York Islanders went to the trade market to build a top pairing with Nick Leddy and Johnny Boychuk. In both cases, the team’s paid a premium to acquire established defensive talent, but all three rosters saw enormous performance gains on the ice.

Now this summer, the Edmonton Oilers, Dallas Stars, Columbus Blue Jackets, and Colorado Avalanche are all supposedly in the hunt for high calibre defensemen to compliment their strong groups of forwards. The Avalanche have been down this road before, and though they reportedly sought after the likes of Niskanen, Orpik, Leddy, and Stralman, the Avs haven’t pulled the trigger and acquired an impactful defenseman since trading for Erik Johnson back in 2011.

The group of suitors for defenseman this offseason will be competitive, and the Avalanche, like Tampa Bay may need to be aggressive via contract or trade in order to succeed. But if the Lightning, Capitals, and Islanders have proved anything in the last year, it’s that overpaying for prime age, high ceiling defenseman is a better risk to take than overpaying for experience in an aging body like Brad Stuart’s, or pinching pennies for limited role players like Nate Guenin.

While existing contracts leave little room for pure roster turnover, the Avalanche do have the right pieces in place to build around. Just like the 2013 Lightning had in Victor Hedman, the Avalanche already have their defensive cornerstone in All-Star and Olympic Silver Medalist Erik Johnson. With Tyson Barrie developed in house and Chris Bigras, a promising piece in the pipeline, the Avs may even be better off now than the 2013 Lightning squad which featured heavy contributions from Eric Brewer and Sami Salo.

One thing’s for certain, if the Avs’ skilled forwards are going to succeed next season, they need the support of a capable NHL defense behind them, even if it means overpaying for a high calibre player. If the Avalanche hope to compete in the increasingly difficult Western Conference, they need substantial upgrades to their Top 4 defensemen before the puck drops on the 2015-2016 NHL season. Tampa Bay has shown that a quick defensive turnaround is possible, but it’s up to the Avalanche to pull the trigger.