The Colorado Avalanche have faced unprecedented injury woes. Can the defending Stanley Cup champions weather the storm long enough to get healthy?
The Colorado Avalanche have faced unprecedented injury woes. Can the defending Stanley Cup champions weather the storm long enough to get healthy?
Help is not coming for the Colorado Avalanche. Not for a while, at least.
Normally, I'd tee up a piece like this with some eloquent, near-poetic description of the Avalanche's injury woes that befall them at the moment, therein setting the stage for their courageous attempt to salvage their season despite their devastatingly shorthanded roster.
But, frankly, that just wouldn't do their situation justice. The Avs have been decimated with injuries this season to a truly astounding degree. And the best way to illustrate that is by listing out their injured list verbatim.
Gabriel Landeskog has been out of action since the pre-season and won't be back until January, at the earliest. Nathan MacKinnon will miss at least the next four weeks, as will Josh Manson. Shane Bowers is slated to miss six weeks, as is Kurtis MacDermid. Evan Rodrigues could return to the lineup in two-to-four weeks' time but has yet to resume skating after suffering a lower-body injury in November.
Valeri Nichushkin and Darren Helm have thankfully stepped back on the ice as they recover from their respective ailments, which is certainly some positive news given that both have been out since October, but are still on the shelf for the time being. And if that weren't enough, Artturi Lehkonen missed Colorado's most recent game on Wednesday, while Mikko Rantanen briefly left the bench before returning.
That is, quite frankly, staggering to behold. I've never seen anything like it. It's as if the hockey gods themselves unleashed their fury on the Avalanche for some divine reason we may never know.
It's a shame, really. The Avalanche entered the 2022-23 season with a positively stacked roster from top-to-bottom – one that featured nearly every piece that helped the club capture their first Stanley Cup in over 20 years last season returning and appearing poised for a fierce title defense moving forward.
Injuries have since stripped that unit to the bone, however, effectively gutting the depth that Joe Sakic and his front office had worked tirelessly to build.
Over a quarter of the way into the season, the Avalanche sit fourth in the Central Division with a 13-10-1 record, two points out of the second and final wild-card spot in the Western Conference.
If the playoffs started today, the defending champions would not be in them. Few can really blame them for that, of course. But facts are facts. Teams must play with the cards they're dealt in the NHL, and the Avs have been dealt a hand so badly, it's as if the dealer rigged the deck against them on purpose.
Regardless of the many sympathies this team is due, the Avalanche still find themselves in the middle of their contention window.
They cannot afford to punt this season no matter how much their circumstances are forcing them to. Colorado's core players are locked in for the foreseeable future – MacKinnon, Rantanen, Makar, Landeskog, Lehkonen, Girard, and Nichushkin are all under contract through at least 2024-25 – but the peripheries of their lineup, the depth they've gone lengths to cultivate, will require a cap-induced facelift this summer.
Basically, the Avalanche need to forge ahead this season and hope for the best. It's their only option, really.
Which begs the question: Can they?
With a little bit of luck, yes.
Amidst the injuries, the Avalanche have managed to rely on two key factors to keep them afloat: Goaltending and the power play.
Despite currently missing all five of their top power-play goal scorers, the Avs have still maintained the ability to capitalize on the man advantage, pacing the entire NHL in power-play efficiency with a league-best 30.3 percent success rate.
Such is the benefit of having Cale Makar as a foundational pillar, it seems; someone always capable of distributing the puck and controlling the play regardless of those around him. And the Avalanche have leaned on Makar more than ever this season, throwing the reigning Norris winner out there for nearly 27 minutes per night in all situations and a whopping 100:49 in total ice time on the man advantage.
The next closest defenseman in 5-on-4 ice time thus far, by the way, is Devon Toews, who has logged 38:28, meaning that the Avalanche are keeping Makar on the ice for nearly three-quarters of every power-play opportunity and reaping the benefits of it.
Basically, if Makar went down, the team goes with him. His loss is one blow the Avs would not be able to weather.
But the brilliance of Cale Makar is not exactly a state secret. What's gone from a question mark to a surprising strength this season is Colorado's goaltending, led by a tandem of Alexandar Georgiev and Pavel Francouz that has noticeably exceeded expectations so far.
Cast off from the Rangers over the summer after his save percentage dipped in each of his five NHL seasons, Georgiev has now grabbed the Avs' starter's job and run with it. He's established himself as a legitimate upper-tier netminder through 17 starts with a .918 save percentage, 11-5-1 record and dazzling 7.9 goals-saved above average.
Francouz has also performed above the league average with a .907 save percentage in seven appearances, but Georgiev has been the team's clear No. 1 through the bulk of the schedule, giving a cap-strapped Avs team top-10 results in every meaningful goaltending stat across the board at an extremely palatable $3.4 million cap hit.
Given the Avalanche have barely broken even in scoring chance percentage at even strength and have actually dipped below the 50 percent threshold in expected goals to this point, having a solid backbone in net and the ability to capitalize on the man advantage have kept this ship from sinking.
Is it sustainable? Probably not. But neither is Colorado's injury luck, which gives the team a chance to claw through the toughest circumstances imaginable and make it out alive on the other side.
With none of the Avs' injuries being season-ending, the expectation is that this club will be back to full strength come playoff time. All they need to do is get in. And by the looks of it, they have the tools to make it happen.