The numbers backing this Avalanche team hint at an intriguing developing story

Colorado weather is extremely unpredictable, especially this time of year. The adage “wait five minutes and it will change” rings true during most seasons but is a mainstay of spring in particular.

However, there is another local adage for winter and early spring that’s just as true: “if it’s unseasonably warm today, it’s probably going to snow tonight or tomorrow.”

That’s because you’re usually in a high-pressure system. Wait a few hours and the cold air moves in, bullies all the warm air up into the atmosphere, and that stored moisture cools and drops as rain or often snow.

It’s a drastic change, going from a beautiful spring day with t-shirts and birds chirping back into the depths of winter overnight. But it’s a natural change and one that – once you’ve experienced it a few times and know what to look for – makes that flip a bit more predictable and easy to anticipate.

Okay, okay, so what does this have to do with hockey?

Right now, the Avs are in a high-pressure system. They are doing everything they can to make it snow some goals, putting 40+ shots on net, barely letting the other team touch the puck, quickly correcting any turnovers or other mistakes they make before it turns into a shot against.

But try as they might, they can barely make anything fall. They fired 80 – yes, 80! – shot attempts at the Kings’ netminder last game, and 84 at Arizona’s the game before that. Over the course of those two contests, they generated 8 expected goals, 90 scoring chances, and 28 high danger shots.

All that for three goals on goalies and one in an empty net.

They’re also struggling to keep the puck out from behind their netminder. They were successful on Friday, but the entire Arizona series last week was characterized by pucks pinballing off five players include two or three Avs before ending up as a goal against.

In their first game against the Coyotes on Monday, the Avs allowed 29 shot attempts, 14 of which were on net. The game on Friday saw the attempts jump a bit to 43, but only 14 weren’t high, wide, or blocked. And against the Kings, there were 35 attempts with only 18 on net.

For reference, the average number of attempts across the league this year is 54 (55 in the Western Division) and the shots on goal clock in at a hair under 30 (29 in the West). Needless to say, the Avs defense in those contests was remarkable.

In those three games they also only allowed 15 high danger attempts combined. That’s the number the Avs generated for themselves in the last game alone.

Despite all that, they still allowed 4 goals on 3.35 expected goals. And it’s not like Grubauer is playing poorly – the bounces are just not going their way.

Worse yet, it’s been like that for most of the season. The past two games are particularly noteworthy, but the Avs haven’t been rewarded for their level of play properly all year.

If you head to any of the “fancy” stat sites like Natural Stat Trick, at the end of their Team charts there’s a little column called PDO. It doesn’t stand for anything – that’s the internet name its creator posted under while coming up with the stat – but it’s a nifty little number that adds a team’s shooting percentage to their save percentage.

It may seem like a strange combination, but when you set the strength to 5v5 hockey, you end up with a handy indicator for “luck”, or, perhaps more accurately, “volatility”.

A normal PDO will be around 1.000 (also sometimes noted as 100.0% depending on the site). If your team’s PDO is further out than around 1.010 or 0.990, you’re either getting very good luck (above 1.000) or very poor luck (below 1.000).

Either way, it’s the same as walking outside in a t-shirt during a Colorado January. You know that the weather is unlikely to stick for long. That snowstorm is coming. You don’t know when, exactly, but the winds of change are blowing and it’s definitely on its way.

Now, PDO isn’t infallible. It’s made up of two different largely unrelated stats. Either could be the broken one, or one may be high enough to cancel out the lowness of the other. It’s also possible for teams that are really, really bad to have a slightly lower baseline PDO than 1.000, and some teams that are really, really good to have a slightly higher one.

In the end, it’s worth thinking about it like a check engine light. It’s not going to tell you why exactly it popped on, but something fishy is happening. You have to do a bit more investigating to understand what exactly is going on, but a change – for good or bad – is definitely coming.

The Avs’ PDO right now is 0.981. That’s the 4th worst in the league and is only 0.004 from overtaking Nashville for 3rd. That is extremely low and indicates that they’re on a season-long run of crappy luck.

When you break the number into its two components, the Avs 5v5 shooting is only at 6.96%, which is the 4th lowest in the league. Their save percentage? 91.18%, 6th worst in the league.

Now, this is a team with good shooters like MacKinnon and Burakovsky.  It’s also a team that has been mostly relying on Grubauer in net. When you swing over to their individual stats, it’s unsurprising to see that they’re all far below their career averages right now.

But it’s not just the stars. Across the team as a whole, the process has been incredibly good. They’re the best team in the league at creating shot attempts and the best team at limiting them.

The teamwide defense, in particular, has been impressive. They’re allowing 3.4 fewer shot attempts against than the #2 club in Dallas. That gap is so large that if you drop down another 3.4 shot attempts from DAL’s rate, you end up with nearly 11 other teams within that range.

When you switch over and look at expected goals – a measure that includes both quantity and quality of attempts – the Avs fall to 4th in the league at 5v5 with 2.39 expected goals for per 60. Their expected goals against once again clocks in at #1 and a sterling 1.8.

Their shot attempts (Corsi for, or CF) percentage is 58.06%, which means they have the puck nearly 60% of the game. Their expected goals percentage is 57.03%. Both are undisputedly the highest in the league and it’s not even close.

To put that in perspective, there have been only 6 teams since 2008 to finish above 56% CF. Three won the Cup and another made the final. The other two were knocked out in the 1st and 3rd rounds, but that’s still a level of postseason success that raises an eyebrow or two.

Of course, those numbers were against the full league and not just in-division play, but the current Avs are putting up gaudy numbers that are blowing everyone, including the other good teams in their division, completely out of the water on both ends of the ice.

But when you look at the percentage of goals that have gone their way, the Avs clock in at a modest 51.16%. It’s 13th in the league and well below their division rivals in Minnesota (59.60%) and Vegas (56.38%) and just above St. Louis (50.94%).

The difference? Minnesota’s PDO is 1.031, highest in the league. Vegas is 1.019 and 3rd. St. Louis is right where they’re supposed to be at 1.003 and 15th.

So what does that mean? It means that Minnesota and Vegas are due for a rough patch. They’ve been getting results that are better than their process. St. Louis is right on the money – what you see is probably about what you’re going to get the rest of the year.

And the Avs? Well. The winds of change are blowing.

To make all of this more impressive, the Avs have been improving their process-indicator numbers despite missing games from their #1, 4, and 5 defensemen, their star center, and a whole slew of other skaters over the course of the year.

According to NHL Injury Viz, the Avs are the 4th most injured team when ranked by cap hit. This isn’t a perfect measure – Cale Makar is a much bigger loss than his entry-level salary is going to accurately indicate – but the team also slots in 3rd when looking at wins above replacement (WAR) lost to injury.

When healthy, this is an insanely talented team. But head coach Jared Bednar has them playing their system so well that they’re completely dominating games despite all the call-ups. As fantastic as they’re playing now, it’s possible there’s another gear once the missing players start to filter back into the lineup.

That is a scary thought. The Avs as they stand today, cruddy PDO and all, are on a 105-point pace over an 82 game season. Last season, they were on pace for 108 despite a high PDO.

Their underlying numbers have improved drastically this year, so if their goal scoring and save percentage goes back where they should be, the Avs will probably start to blow those paces out of the water.

Kudos where they’re due – the wins lately have not been pretty, but they have been wins. They’re tight, they’re frustrating, and they require a level of focus and effort that this tired team may not be able to sustain over a long period of time. But they are wins.

With any luck, they shouldn’t have to keep up this brutal existence long. PDO benders are unpredictable, but the longer they go, the more likely they are to turn. It could start tonight. It could start next week. It could remain crappy until the playoffs and the Avs use the dam breaking to go on a ridiculous run to the Cup.

We don’t know when, but it is almost a statistical certainty that their PDO will improve before the end of the season. And at this point, it’s more likely to start sooner than later.

So what will it look like when it does break open? Well, there will probably be a big blowout or two. But the Avs are so deep in the hole that we’re likely looking at a sustained hot streak to go with it. Hard to say how long it will last, but we’re probably talking on the magnitude of couple weeks to a couple months instead of a couple games.

Once things correct to the mean and simmer down a bit, you’d also still expect the Avs to kick along at close to their expected goals pace. While it might not be as fun as the bounce-back period, it’s at least a nice little boost over their current predicament.

At the end of the day, this is a very good team. They’re not doing anything wrong right now. There’s nothing but a few minor nitpicks to fix. Hockey is just sometimes like this.

You can take all the right shots and shoot them like you always have and they just don’t fall. You can be in the right position and ready to make the save and have the puck take a crazy hop right over your head.

And sometimes you run up against teams who are scoring on everything and hot goalies playing the games of their lives. Hockey is cruel like that.

But in this game, fortunes turn quickly and things tend to even out. Unusually warm days are balanced with the snow.

So even though this team has a lot more frustration and a lot more sunscreen happening right now than there should be, keep those shovels handy. We’re not out of Colorado springtime yet.

For the Avalanche, the snow – and wins – are still coming.