So what the heck happened? The Avalanche went from the surprise team of the NHL’s 2013-14 regular season, racking up 112 points, to be part of a sad-sack, two-team, Stan Kroenke-owned NHL/NBA act that will leave the Pepsi Center largely inactive from mid-April to June … unless Bette Midler and Neil Diamond are willing to add to their one-night stands in late May.
The Avalanche’s 3-2 win over Chicago gave Colorado a final record of 39-31-12, for 90 points. That left Colorado seventh and last in the tough Central Division a year after winning it. The Avs were a major playoff disappointment a year ago, falling in seven games to Minnesota. Rather than learning from that, the Avs failed to make the postseason.
While not hiding his disappointment, coach Patrick Roy gets around to the bright side.
“I’d like to think it’s a step backward to jump forward,” the Hall of Fame goaltender said.
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The Avs generally were believed to be on the verge of rejoining the league’s elite with a core of relatively young players and with a coach who won the Jack Adams Award the previous season after his former teammate, general manager Joe Sakic, brought him back to Denver.
Some of the major issues in the slippage involved:
A horrible start. The Avs were 1-4-1 out of the gate and then 4-8-5, setting a tone.
“We didn’t start playing .500 hockey until after Christmas, and when you do that in the Central Division in the Western Conference, it’s going to be tough to catch up,” said captain Gabe Landeskog. “It’s a lesson learned for all of us for a long time going forward.”
In retrospect, the preseason concessions — both from players and management — that getting 112 points again probably was unrealistic were red flags. They were proved right, but it seemed to contribute to a mind-set that the Avs could get away with pacing themselves and peaking for the stretch run and postseason. They couldn’t.
The power play stunk. At 14.6 percent, the Avs were 29th in the NHL, ahead of only Buffalo.
“The power play creates momentum for your year, and the opposite,” Sakic said. “You could see our guys have a letdown when our power play wasn’t doing well, especially early in the year.”
Said Roy: “There’s no reason for our power play to not be around 20 percent with the skills and the talent that we have. There are going to be some tweaks here and there with things we want to change — on our puck retrieving and finding ways to have more traffic to the net.”
The young guns disappointed. Matt Duchene, Ryan O’Reilly, Landeskog and Nathan MacKinnon had lacksluster seasons, though O’Reilly and especially Landeskog came on late.
Injury bug. As the Avalanche has been relentless in pointing out, this team suffered more than its share of injuries.
“The power play was one of the things, but the big reason to me is the injuries,” Roy said. “Early in the season, we lost our goalie for 15 games. … We lost depth players that missed a lot of games. At the end, we lost (Erik) Johnson for 10 weeks, we lost MacKinnon for five weeks. … We’re going to have a record year for the Avalanche with the number of injuries.”
The problems with fixating on injuries are: a) the accounting (“man games lost”) was misleading because of the marginal personnel often involved; b) Calvin Pickard filled in more than capably in goal when Semyon Varlamov was out; and c) this season’s die seemed cast before Johnson (knee surgery) and MacKinnon (broken foot) were lost in late January and early March, respectively.
Punchless third and fourth lines. These lines were incapable of contributing the occasional spark that comes with goals from unexpected places. There, the injury rationalization has some validity, with Jamie McGinn, among others, lost for most of the year.
Despite all the problems, the Avalanche as of Saturday was the only team in the league with at least six players with more than 50 points. Yet the sum total of the parts was last place.
Struggling defense. With the exception of Johnson, who had a strong season and appeared to be reaching the star status expected of him when taken first overall in the 2006 draft, and perhaps while taking Tyson Barrie’s offensive skills into account, the defense continued to struggle. That again raised the question of whether Sakic and Roy, also the vice president of hockey operations, placed too much contractual and on-ice faith in veterans being asked to do more than they’re capable of.
Next season will be the third for the Avalanche with Sakic at the top of the hockey hierarchy and Roy as coach.
“Next year’s a big test for sure,” Sakic conceded. “We expect to win. We didn’t come here to be hovering and be missing the playoffs. Last year, for sure, 112 points, we know we weren’t as good as 112 points. This year, I think we’re a better team than (how) we performed.
“The big thing is what happened the first half of the year. We weren’t ready for it. So is next year a test? You better believe it is a test next year. We went through the learning process this year. … I talk about consistency. It’s time for them to step up with the consistency and become that team, and the expectation level has to be there right from the start.”
Terry Frei: tfrei@denverpost.com or
