It’s a riddle wrapped in stick tape inside an Avalanche jersey. Colorado’s high-powered, super-charged offense can’t score.
How a team as talented as the Avs can go from scoring the third-most goals one season to the third-fewest the next has them scratching their heads.
“It’s not a secret to anyone that we haven’t been producing lately,” Colorado captain Gabe Landeskog said Tuesday. “It’s frustrating, no doubt.”
The Avalanche takes a minus-17 goal margin into a Wednesday night game against the Philadelphia Flyers at the Pepsi Center. And the Avs’ best skaters are collectively slogging through a scoring slump.
Tuesday, the Avs’ primary goal scorers met to hash out the problems.
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“We had a meeting about it,” winger Ryan O’Reilly said. “As forwards, we know we have to be better. We have to provide offense.”
Landeskog is scoreless in his past 12 games. O’Reilly has scored twice in his past 11 games. Matt Duchene has one goal in his past 10 games.
Together, Landeskog ($5.6 million), O’Reilly and Duchene ($6 million each) are the Avs’ highest-paid players this season. They combined for only four shots at St. Louis on Monday in the Blues’ easy 3-0 victory.
The loss led Colorado coach Patrick Roy to call them out.
“When you’re looking at guys with zero goals in 10 games or one or two goals in 10 games, it’s clear that we need to do things differently,” Roy told reporters in St. Louis. “Right now, we need more from them.”
Tuesday, after the Avs watched video and went through off-ice workouts, Roy continued.
“We just don’t want to beat ourselves, and I think right now that’s what we’ve been doing,” he said.
Including 19-year-old Nathan MacKinnon, who has one goal in his past 18 games, most of the best players aren’t producing.
The Avs have 92 goals in 36 games — 2.6 goals per game, on average. At the same point last season, with largely the same personnel, the Avalanche had scored 101 goals — 2.8 per game. After the new year, though, the Avs got hot last season. They finished that season averaging 3.1 goals.
But the reasons behind the slump are elusive.
“Sometimes you’re lying at home, trying to think back to the games when we do score or the times when you’re hot like last year, to see the things you did differently,” Landeskog said. “But for me, personally, I haven’t been able to find an answer to that.
“There are some X’s and O’s that you can do differently, but it’s just a matter of working hard, really.”
O’Reilly said work needs to be done grinding out goals.
“It’s more complicated,” O’Reilly said. “You go around the room and look at the guys who are supposed to be offensive, like myself, and you can’t say one thing is wrong. It’s a bunch of things. Everybody has something they need to do to be more effective. For me, I have to be more physical in front of the net. A lot of my offense is created from getting on the puck first and taking possession.”
Roy on Tuesday laid out a path for what the Avs need to do to score — with hope things will turn around.
“We talk about driving the net more. We’re talking about simplifying at the blue line, being better in our compete level, winning those battles,” Roy said. “And I think we’re going to see a big difference in our offense.”
Nick Groke: ngroke@denverpost.com or
PHILADELPHIA AT COLORADO
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Spotlight on Jakub Voracek: The Flyers’ 25-year-old right wing is streaking. He leads the NHL with 46 points (14 goals and a league-best 32 assists). Philadelphia center Claude Giroux is right behind with 42 points. But Voracek has been a boon. In an eight-game stretch between Dec. 9-23, he put up 13 points. But he’s scoreless in his past two.
NOTEBOOK
Avalanche: Colorado on Tuesday recalled forward Borna Rendulic from the American Hockey League to fill out its fourth line. The Avs had a shortened 20-man roster Monday at St. Louis with no healthy scratches, so they used defenseman Nick Holden as a forward. Rendulic, a 22-year-old right wing from Croatia, played in three games for the Avs this season, on a call-up from the Monsters three weeks ago. He has one shot on goal. With Lake Erie, Rendulic has four goals and four assists in 26 games this season.
Flyers: Jakub Voracek’s two-game scoreless streak is his longest skid of the season. … Claude Giroux also didn’t score in Philly’s loss to Arizona on Monday — just the second time this season Voracek and Giroux went pointless in the same game.
Nick Groke, The Denver Post
