The Colorado Avalanche is a short-list Stanley Cup contender with Mackenzie Blackwood or Scott Wedgewood in net this season. The Avs are an also-ran when it’s anyone else.
This wild episode of Extreme Makeover: Avalanche Edition began when Colorado traded for Wedgewood and Blackwood 10 days apart. Since then, general manager Chris MacFarland has continued to reshape the roster with a plethora of deals.
The results are obvious: Colorado is 27-11-3 when Blackwood or Wedgewood is the goalie of record. The Avs are 14-13-0 when it’s one of the other four guys (Alexandar Georgiev, Justus Annunen, Kaapo Kahkonen, Trent Miner).
That’s a 114-point pace with Blackwood and Wedgewood, and an 84-point pace otherwise. The Avs are one of the hottest teams in the league right now, riding an 8-0-1 stretch into a three-game Eastern Canada road swing that coincides with Valeri Nichushkin returning to the lineup and MacFarland’s last mad dash of moves to infuse five more new guys before the trade deadline.
So, are the Avs playing better as a team, or do they just have better players? In goal, the answer is pretty obvious. Overall, it involves a little more context.
“I think it’s both,” Avs coach Jared Bednar said. “The team is growing, now that you add all these veteran guys. There’s a real belief now in the room. They feel it. It’s getting into that stretch run where you’re really focusing on what you do.
“We’re doing a lot of things better. Positionally, just tactically, even conceptually, like how we think about the game with a patient, more mature approach. But the players help. … It’s helping us a lot.”
This Avalanche season can be broken into at least three acts, if not four. The first is before the two goalie trades. The second act is with the new goalies and before the seismic Mikko Rantanen blockbuster. The third at this point is everything since.
But by the end of the season, there will be enough data to add a fourth — from the last flurry of trades until the end. For this exercise, we’re just going to break it into thirds.
Here’s a look at Avs in a few key metrics, before Dec. 3 — when Wedgewood made his Avs debut and helped rally them from an ugly four-goal deficit in Buffalo — and after.
| Category | Before Dec. 3 | NHL rank | After Dec. 3 | NHL rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Points % | 0.52 | 18th | 0.686 | 3rd |
| 5v5 xGF% | 52.99 | 5th | 51.46 | 11th |
| 5v5 GF% | 43.69 | 28th | 55.76 | 4th |
| Overall xGF% | 52.83 | 9th | 51.99 | 11th |
| Overall GF% | 46.24 | 24th | 59.04 | 2nd |
| Save% | 85.6 | 32nd | 90.97 | 5th |
(Click here to view chart in mobile)
xGF% – expected goals for percentage; GF% – actual goals for percentage
It might be lost to history for some, but the rest of the Avs were actually playing well in the first third of the season, save for a couple of ugly games right at the start. The goaltending, and availability issues, were clearly the big problems.
Insert two goalies who have played very well and viola, the wins have followed.
Now, here’s the same 68 games split up a different way, before the Friday night Mikko blockbuster that stunned the NHL, and after:
| Category | Before Jan. 25 | NHL rank | After Jan. 25 | NHL rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Points % | 0.592 | 12th | 0.711 | 3rd |
| 5v5 xGF% | 50.6 | 16th | 55.5 | 3rd |
| 5v5 GF% | 48.73 | 21st | 57.75 | 3rd |
| Overall xGF% | 50.57 | 16th | 57.03 | 2nd |
| Overall GF% | 51.44 | 12th | 60.55 | 3rd |
(Click here to view chart in mobile)
xGF% – expected goals for percentage; GF% – actual goals for percentage
The Avs, not counting the goaltenders, were actually worse from early December through late January. Nichushkin missed half of this time. Casey Mittelstadt and Ross Colton, the two guys who stepped up to support Nathan MacKinnon, Cale Makar and Rantanen at the start of the year, went into prolonged funks.
Everything has come together since the Rantanen trade. The Avs have scored the fourth-most goals and allowed the fourth-fewest. They are third in power-play goals scored, while being tied for eighth in fewest allowed on the penalty kill.
While Colorado is third in points percentage since Jan. 24, the two teams in front of them are Winnipeg and Dallas. That said, the Avalanche’s underlying metrics are superior to both of its division rivals in that span.
It’s not just the additions of Martin Necas and Jack Drury, plus the rest of the new guys who eventually arrived. Nichushkin, Artturi Lehkonen and Jonathan Drouin are all healthy now. The Avs have gone from playing one or two forwards who probably belong in the AHL most nights to now having two veteran NHL regulars sitting as healthy scratches.
Winning cures a lot of things, but the vibes are sky-high, and the recent play — both process and results — looks like a group with the ability to make a long run in the 2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs.
“I think we’re playing better with better players,” Avs forward Logan O’Connor said. “It’s a combination. We have a bit more of a swagger that we lacked earlier in the year and even at times last year. It feels like there’s a bit more of an aura around the team.
“When we can feed off that emotion and that mojo, that’s when we are at our best.”
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