PITTSBURGH – When a team starts the season 6-1 and still has the second-best goal differential in the league after a four-goal loss, there probably isn’t a whole lot to be concerned about.
The Avalanche wasted little time this season showing it can be one of the best teams in the NHL. Given the new depth up front, the best collection of defensemen in the sport, and a great start from goaltender Alexandar Georgiev and the penalty kill, and this looks like a complete team with the highest ceiling possible.
So, is there anything to worry about to the point? That’s hard to say, because “small sample size” is an easy retort for any response.
If we’re really digging deep, the one area that hasn’t quite met this team’s incredibly high standard for itself is the power play. It was an issue in the club’s only loss, a 4-0 defeat Thursday night against the Penguins.
The Avalanche had five power-play opportunities, including nearly six minutes of extra-man time in the second period when the game was 3-0 and a goal might have sparked some semblance of a comeback.
It didn’t happen.
“The power play is usually a direct reflection of your 5-on-5 play,” coach Jared Bednar said after the game. “When you’re on, you’re sharp and you’re executing, power plays become lethal. When you’re off, the timing is off, bouncing pucks, execution is poor, decision-making is poor, it carries over to the power play.”
Colorado has scored six times on the power play in seven games. That’s an 82-game pace of about 70 goals with the extra man, and that number would have been fourth in the NHL last year.
The Avs have converted 23.1% of their power-play chances so far. That would have been 10th last season, a slight dip from their performance in 2022-23 (24.5%, which was good for sixth).
If someone read those last two paragraphs and thought, “OK, there’s nothing wrong here, right?” … that’s partially true. There’s nothing wrong with those overall numbers, and most teams in the league would take them.
But the Avs have already established their internal standards are going to be sky high this season. So yeah, the power play can be better.
“When we’re not playing fast, then our game gets exposed,” defenseman Cale Makar said. “The spots that our guys are supposed to be in, myself included, it just wasn’t there. Then it’s just a trickle effect. Once one guy is off sync, then everyone gets off sync.”
One thing it hasn’t been so far is consistently productive. Three of the six goals came in one game, where the opposing goalie looked pretty terrible in all phases of the game.
It’s not just about goals, especially this early in the season. The Avalanche power play has looked great at times, but the guy in net charged with stopping shots did his job well.
What are some ways that the power play can be better, beyond just putting the little black thing in the net more often? To start with, the Avs can do more to have more power plays.
Colorado is a team that is going to possess the puck more than its opponent on most nights. The Avs have spent 43.0% of their even-strength ice time in the offensive zone, according to the NHL’s new tracking data website, NHL EDGE, and that is among the best in the league.
They’re fourth in the NHL in Corsi for percentage (55.39), which means they attempt to shoot the puck more at 5-on-5 than their opponents. Before the tracking data was released to the public, that was the best proxy for puck possession — a team that shoots it more likely has the puck more.
Teams that have the puck more should also be expected to draw more penalties. Most penalties are committed while trying to play defense.
The Avs are only 13th in the league in power-play chances per game. It should be higher. A couple of players certainly felt there were some missed penalties Thursday night on the Penguins, so maybe it’s just a matter of the officials calling infractions that are happening.
All of the underlying numbers suggest the Avs are shooting it enough and creating enough good chances to score more. They’re in the top six in the league in shot attempts, shots on goal and expected goals per 60 minutes at 5-on-4, per Natural Stat Trick.
They didn’t shoot it enough against the Penguins, but that looked like the out-of-sync issue Makar mentioned. In other games, they’ve been in sync but maybe were a little too pass happy at times.
Still, maybe the biggest reason why Colorado doesn’t have more power-play goals is it’s shooting 13.64% with the extra man, which is 14th. Given the talent the Avs put out there on PP1, it would be a bad idea to bet on them continuing to shoot (relatively) poorly over the next 75 games.
But it’s also plausible to say the Avs can create another great chance or two per game and over time that would very likely increase the shooting percentage.
Look, the Avs have already made it clear they are going to hunt for nits to pick, even when they’re rolling on a long winning streak. So if there’s one minor, tiny concern this early in the season, it’s probably a slightly inconsistent power play.
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