Skip navigation
Favorites
Sign up to follow your favorites on all your devices.
Sign up

Are the Avs about to get a reality check?

Patrick Roy and Avs

It was going to happen at some point. The Colorado Avalanche weren’t going to play an entire season without losing back-to-back games. The question now is, how do they respond?

The Avs were beaten badly, 7-3, last night in St. Louis. They also lost, 2-1, on Tuesday in Carolina.

Tomorrow, Colorado hosts Florida, one of the worst teams in the NHL. But after the Panthers, it gets tough.

Really tough.

Avs schedule

For all the stories that have been written about the Avs being free to run and gun under new coach Patrick Roy, and that being a good thing, skeptics have maintained Colorado’s due for a reality check.

From Grantland’s Sean McIndoe:

Here’s the deal: While the Avalanche are clearly a much better team than most of us expected them to be, there’s also strong evidence their success has been heavily influenced by good luck that should even out.

Let’s start with that remarkable goaltending. To put it bluntly, it’s completely unsustainable. Unless you believe that the Avalanche will put up the best season of goaltending this era has seen (by far), their overall save percentage is going to drop, and probably drop sharply.

So while the Avalanche goalies may still end up being very good, they can’t possibly be this good. And chances are, neither can their shooters — the team’s 11.2 shooting percentage is also on the high side, ranking second in the NHL.

Even with a 14-4-0 record, there are some who would pick the Avs to miss the playoffs in the very tough Western Conference.

Standings

This next stretch of games should be interesting.