With the Penguins winning their back-to-back Stanley Cups on Sunday night, and Turd Crosby reigning king once again, we can finally put in end to the 2016-2017 season. I had hoped that by the end of the playoffs the bitter taste of the Avs’ season would have subsided. It has not.
The Avalanche finished with 22 wins, 56 losses and 48 points. Only nine points better than their 2012-2013 season, where they only played 48 games compared to the standard 82 games due to a lockout in the first part of the season. It goes without saying that the Avalanche finished with the worst record in the league. Coming in at 29th in the league with the second worst record was Vancouver, and they finished with 69 points. Just a cool 21 points ahead of the Avs.
One would hope that with a record as miserable as the Avs, that it should at least guarantee a first round draft pick. However, due to the lottery style of the draft, the Avs have gotten the 4th round pick. The draft will begin on June 23, where we can expect to get more young talent that will probably go without having the proper player development like what has happened to so many of our other young players.
Before the regular draft commences, there will be an NHL Expansion Draft for the new Vegas Golden Knights team. This draft will allow the new club to draft players from all the pre-existing teams to create their roaster. Each team will be able to protect a certain number of players from being drafted by the Knights. If only we could give the Golden Knights our entire roster and we could pick a fresh team.
Unfortunately, I don’t think that our real issues lie within the players themselves but in our team management and coaching staff. I am not surprised Roy left, and wish that we could have all gone with him. Only joking, of course. Mostly. Thankfully there was an overhaul in May with our assistant coaching staff, but only time will tell if it will be enough to make improvements.
I have mainly held off from posting for the past couple of months because I don’t hold a great amount of enthusiasm for next season, and have a strong sense that it is going to be a long road ahead until we could be watching our team playing in June. I would like to say that it can’t get any worse, but things could always be worse. I mean the Washington Capitals went 8-67-5 in their inaugural season, and improved to 11 game wins in their second season. Now that's a bad season.
While the Avs had the worst season in franchise history, we can celebrate he fact that the Red Wings did not clinch a playoff spot for the first time in 25 yeas, the Blackhawks got swept in Round 1, with the Wild only making it to 5 games before they were also eliminated in the First Round, and Cody Mac got to play in the Stanley Cup Finals. At this point, we gotta take what we can get, and I’ll take all of that!