Screen Shots: Colorado Avalanche, San Jose Sharks, Marc-Andre Fleury

This is Screen Shots, a regular THN.com feature in which we tackle a few hockey topics and write about them in a few concise paragraphs. Let’s get straight to it:

Lost amid the strong starts of teams like Vegas, Boston and the New York Rangers is the early season play of the Colorado Avalanche, who are in a three-way tie for top spot in the Central Division with a 13-6-0 record. The Avs have won five of their past six games, beating Vancouver and Dallas, among other teams. They’re also winning despite having next-to-no secondary scoring help, either from their bottom-nine forwards or bottom-four defensemen.

Indeed, if it weren’t for their top stars, Colorado would be in trouble; their first line of center Nathan MacKinnon, Valeri Nichushkin and Mikko Rantanen have combined for 67 points – and their bottom three forward lines have combined for 46 points. Only one Avs forward other than MacKinnon, Rantanen and Nichushkin are averaging as much or more than 0.50 points per game. And on the blueline, after stars Cale Makar (29 points) and Devon Toews (12 points), the Avs’ next-best four defensemen have combined for just 12 points. Colorado’s stars are doing all the heavy lifting, and somehow, they keep finding ways to win.

The Avalanche are also getting a workhorse-like season from starting goaltender Alexandar Georgiev, who has appeared in a whopping 17 games already this year. Georgiev’s individual stats – including a .892 save percentage and 2.95 goals-against average – aren’t going to put him at the front of the Vezina Trophy race, but the Avs don’t need him to steal games. They just need him to keep them in games, and let their top skaters do what they need to do to win.

The Avalanche are heading into a part of their schedule which should allow them to pad their lead in the Central. In their next 10 games, they take on Calgary (twice), Anaheim (twice), Tampa Bay, Arizona, Los Angeles, Winnipeg, Philadelphia and Buffalo. Winning six or seven of those games will keep Colorado atop the Central, and once they add a couple of more players by the trade deadline, the Avs will rightfully be one of the favorites to win another Stanley Cup. When your best players are your best players, you don’t need help from everyone in the lineup, and that’s certainly true of the Avalanche at the moment.

The San Jose Sharks continued their miserable season this week, and other than their dismal road record of 3-15-2, what really sticks out is how bad even their veteran players have been this year. Sharks GM Mike Grier probably intended to trade veterans Mike Hoffman and Anthony Duclair, as they’re both in the final season of their current contract, but Hoffman has generated just five goals and six points in 19 games, and Duclair has only three goals and five points in 17 games.

Unless there’s a team out there that wants the salary cap space that Hoffman and Duclair take up, which team is going to want these veterans? Other than maybe goaltender Mackenzie Blackwood, nobody jumps out as a helpful asset to another team. As a result, Grier may be stuck with this lineup till the summer. That's OK for their blueprint for the long-term future, but the present may be bleaker than even their harshest critics envisioned.

In 13 of their losses, the Sharks have been held to one goal or fewer, and the cumulative result on their trade capabilities puts a significant damper on what Grier can do. This is going to be as painful a year as any team in recent memory has suffered through, and unless there’s a major turnaround for them on offense, it’s going to be more of the same for them in their final 62 games.

Finally, we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention the controversy surrounding Minnesota Wild goalie Marc-Andre Fleury's mask. Somehow, in attempting to deny Fleury the chance to wear a custom-made mask honoring First Nations people, the NHL has made a mountain from a molehill. Despite the league’s threats though, Fleury showed his independence in the end anyway, wearing the custom mask to honor First Nations people, and on a more personal level, his wife's family who have a Native American background. 

There had to be an easier way to address the NHL’s concerns than the route they chose, but now that it’s over and done with, the league should make a point to be more sensitive to players' needs so that this doesn't happen again. Fleury has always been a solid citizen in his Hockey Hall-of-Fame career, and he deserved better than what he got.