The start of the New Year is filled with the cliches of new beginnings, resolutions, and promises to yourself that are usually discarded by the end of January. Riding this cynical mindset (after the Avs have lost four games in a row, what can you expect?) I propose to the Avs that they need to look to their former selves to get back on track. You know, the ones who won the Stanley Cup. It has only been six months since the Avs claimed Lord Stanley, but with how this team currently looks, it feels like years ago.
We are approaching the halfway point of the season; the Avs are five games above .500 and sit outside of a playoff spot. Until this point, I have given the boys a little slack, it was an extremely short off-season, and players keep falling to injury like it’s contagious. Evan Rodrigues and Val Nichushkin returned to the ice from injuries, only for Big Val to reinjury his surgically repaired ankle and E Rod to go out with an “upper-body injury.” Landeskog and Byram are still out with no specified return. Bednar said he expects them both to return this season: not exactly encouraging news.
However, with the Mac Attack back, the Avs have two of the top players in the league in the lineup. The duo of MacKinnon and Makar is more than most teams could hope to have. Mikko Rantanen has scored nearly 25% of the Avalanche goals this year, and I am sick of blaming the Avs' lackluster performance on injuries. In December, the Avs lost four in a row, then came back and won 6/7 in the games leading up to Christmas, but since the holiday break, the Avs have yet to win. When asked to sum up the Avs in the first half of the season, Bednar said 1.) adversity and 2.) inconsistent. It is a long season, and we don’t expect to win every game, obviously, but championship teams bounce back. Last year the Avs only lost three games in a row once. It’s not even half way through the season, and we have lost four in a row, twice.
A lot of people speculate that as long as the Avs make the playoffs, they will be ok. To me, that’s not good enough, and I felt validated when Coach Bednar said, “Confidence can’t come from the past,” and that “You are what you repeatedly do.” If we take that literally, I guess that makes us losers. Though Bedsy would never put it that way. What we are doing now will matter when playoff season starts. Recently, my eight-year-old nephew reasonably asked, “If it isn’t the playoffs, are all the other games just for fun?”. While the regular season is fun, it is long, and it is about learning lessons so that the team can build on them for the playoffs. So far, it doesn’t seem that the Avs are building on those lessons.
In their most recent loss, the Avs had several chances and looked good enough to win, but they had a sloppy second period and allowed three unanswered goals to go down 3-1. While they did make a push in the final period, it wasn’t enough, and they fell 3-2. MacKinnon looked like his usually high-flying self, but the team didn’t show the urgency you would expect from a team that had lost their last three contests. It feels like the Avs are playing safe hockey, maybe for fear of another injury or the chemistry with the newer players isn’t clicking, but what it also looks like is that they are waiting to get to the post-season. However, there are 46 games until we can get to the playoffs, but in order to secure a spot, the Avs need to channel their championship spirit and fight to earn that spot.
The Avs may be battered black and blue, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have the ability to do better. We have been dealt a bunch of lemons so far, but let’s give them to everyone on a cleanse this month, and move on!
Up next, the boys are on a two-game road trip to Canada, with both Nichushkin and Rodrigues traveling with the team, but uncertain if they will be cleared to play. The Avs will face off against Vancouver tonight and then on Saturday, Edmonton, for the first time since sweeping them in the Western Conference Finals. The Oilers and Connor McDavid will undoubtedly bring their best; let’s hope the Avs do too.