Are the Avalanche a bit overrated ?

[HockeyWooot]

Yes, slightly overrated. Definitely a legit contender, but shouldn’t yet be anointed as one of the odds on favorites.

 

[Tommy Shelby]

They're only overrated if you thought they were winning the cup this year.

Underperforming due to a ridiculous amount of injuries isn't being overrated

 

[The Merchant]

Yes

 

[avsfan9]

The only thing this team has consistency in is injuries. I’ve never seen a team with so many of their good players injured all the time. It’s a bit concerning.

 

[tucker3434]

Something is going on with MacKinnon. I’m hoping it’s just a cold streak. But it’s odd for a guy’s shooting percentage to get cut in half. If he’s hurt we’re screwed. But if he is just gripping the stick too hard, he’ll get over it.

 

[TheImpatientPanther]

Something is going on with MacKinnon. I’m hoping it’s just a cold streak. But it’s odd for a guy’s shooting percentage to get cut in half. If he’s hurt we’re screwed. But if he is just gripping the stick too hard, he’ll get over it.

They're just not as good as most thought they were.
Happens every year, 2-3 teams over/underachieve

 

[AvsCOL]

They are definitely overrated. Makar is very overrated. There are a few guys saying he is the early favourite for Norris. This was just a few days ago. Meanwhile he is 56th in goals scored for dmen. He’s not even scoring much this year and his defence is not in the same universe as Hedman and others

kind of stopped reading here. You don’t watch the Avs if you think Makar is underachieving...

 

[tucker3434]

They're just not as good as most thought they were.
Happens every year, 2-3 teams over/underachieve

They’re underperforming in most of the luck stats. Everyone loves to discuss regression towards the mean when it means a team is playing better than they should. It’s pretty quiet when it’s the opposite. The Avs are very capable of being toward the top of the league in shooting and save percentage. They won’t be a bottom 1/3 PDO team indefinitely nor will MacKinnon continue to shoot at career low rates. It might not be until next season before it corrects, but I’m not concerned about the overall construction of the roster.

The Wild were on a 6 game win streak before their last OTL. The blues have 3 points on us but we have 3 games on them. This kind of thread could look bad in as little as a week.

 

[Gargyn]

kind of stopped reading here. You don’t watch the Avs if you think Makar is underachieving...

You expected him to have one goal at this point? Ok. On pace for 4-5 goals. Guess I expected more.

 

[TheImpatientPanther]

They’re underperforming in most of the luck stats. Everyone loves to discuss regression towards the mean when it means a team is playing better than they should. It’s pretty quiet when it’s the opposite. The Avs are very capable of being toward the top of the league in shooting and save percentage. They won’t be a bottom 1/3 PDO team indefinitely nor will MacKinnon continue to shoot at career low rates. It might not be until next season before it corrects, but I’m not concerned about the overall construction of the roster.

The Wild were on a 6 game win streak before their last OTL. The blues have 3 points on us but we have 3 games on them. This kind of thread could look bad in as little as a week.

You seem pretty confident and I don't doubt COL will be a playoff team in that division but every night, other teams are collecting points and we're all a 1/3 of the way into the season now, can't wait much longer for this turnaround.

Enough excuses, time for COL to prove their worthy of the top 5/SC fave moniker

 

[tucker3434]

You seem pretty confident and I don't doubt COL will be a playoff team in that division but every night, other teams are collecting points and we're all a 1/3 of the way into the season now, can't wait much longer for this turnaround.

Enough excuses, time for COL to prove their worthy of the top 5/SC fave moniker

I’m not denying we aren’t where we want to be in the standings. I just don’t think the issues we’ve had so far have been big red flags. I would be a lot more concerned if we were out there getting shelled night-in/night-out. That hasn’t been happening. If anything, it’s been the opposite.

To me, it’s like sitting at the roulette table. We’ve seen red come up 5 times in a row. What’s coming up the next five times? I’m not betting on 5 reds, although it definitely is possible. I’m guessing things will even out a bit as we play through the season. Guys will move away from the career low scoring rates they’re at right now. When it happens doesn’t really matter as long as we make the playoffs.

 

[IranCondraAffair]

From my long experience of watching hockey and my own painful mistakes, I've listed some of the reasons teams fail to "take the next step" or improve substantially:

1. Guys regress, stagnate, or don't meet expectations. This is especially true with young players. Fans project ever increasing point totals but we have no benefit of hindsight. A young player's 3rd or 4th season sometimes ends up being the best one of their career.

2. New players who are expected to be improvements on existing ones but are confined by changing roles and expectations. "Bob was a 35 point winger and we just acquired Jim, a 55point winger, our offence will be better!" This kind of simplistic logic ignores that Jim might have had a ton of PP opportunity over Bob or that Jim had much better line-mates, or Jim might not mesh well with his new teammates. That is why the most sustainable growth comes from internal development in existing roles rather than the acquisition of successful players form other teams

3. Injuries are the norm, but we treat them like the exception. When a team has no major injuries or manageable injuries we hardly notice and when they do well, we usually don't recognize injury luck as a contributing factor to success. We usually just see a team who gets a lot of injuries do poorly and attribute their failure to injuries. I don't know why this happens, but I hardly ever see articles saying "Team X is having a great season because all the other teams have more injuries!"

4. Systems break down and teams start planning for you. This happens a lot with teams that do major turnarounds. You can get away with playing a certain way for 50 games. 80 games. Sometimes even 160 games. Especially if you are surprising teams with novelty. Eventually teams get enough film and enough experience playing against teams with "gimmick" styles and learn how to defeat them. If there is no underlying talent to support the progress, a team can regress.

Those are the big ones from my experience. All it takes is a few extra injuries, a few players having down seasons, a few more teams planning for games against you, and some improvements that never materialize and suddenly a team is back to where they started.

 

[NyQuil]

Those are the big ones from my experience. All it takes is a few extra injuries, a few players having down seasons, a few more teams planning for games against you, and some improvements that never materialize and suddenly a team is back to where they started.

These are good points.

I think the missing element which you allude to here is the fact that the NHL has a fair amount of parity compared to some other team sports.

So that competitive edge can be eroded pretty quickly.

You don't typically see win/loss records in hockey like the leading NBA franchises or the football or soccer squads at the tops of their respective tables.

 

[Red Piller]

Cale Makar definitely is

 

[AvsCOL]

You expected him to have one goal at this point? Ok. On pace for 4-5 goals. Guess I expected more.

Do you know what his stat line was for his first 15 games last year? 1 goal, 11 assists for 12 points.

This season he has 1 goal, 13 assists for 14 points.

Defenseman scoring comes in spurts, and should never be the measure of a defenseman.

 

[Northern Avs Fan]

Cale Makar definitely is

Gooood. Give into your urges, Canucks fans.

 

[Stephen]

They're just not as good as most thought they were.
Happens every year, 2-3 teams over/underachieve

Avs had a unique combination of an exciting playoff run vs Arizona and cut short vs Dallas via catastrophic injuries, a number of high end young players at both forward and defense and cap flexibility which gave them an air of unlimited potential this year.

So the thinking is if they continued on their trajectory, had a bit better health and spent their cap wisely you'd see them get to the next level (Stanley Cup).

 

[who_me?]

just like Mikhail Makarov isn't who he is, the Avs aren't what they seem to be, so it seems

 

[Dirty Dan]

First off, he's better than Zadorov.

Second off, he's been fine in a lot of games this season, but it seems that nobody is scoring for the Avs (including MacKinnon) which is exacerbating his inconsistency issues. You can probably ask any Avs fan here and none of them would ever reverse that trade.

Is he really though? Who checks hard on that backend? The blackhawks are doing just fine because hes a borderline top 6 guy

i dont know how you can compare them

 

[Richard88]

Is he really though? Who checks hard on that backend? The blackhawks are doing just fine because hes a borderline top 6 guy

i dont know how you can compare them

Chicago have a tricky decision to make with Zadorov. He's not really more than a No.5 Dman, but playing in their top 4 this year he'll want to get paid as a top 4 Dman this coming offseason. The Athletic mentioned it in the article about Chicago trade options today.

 

[Avelanche]

They are fine. They haven’t struggled against any team. Just two random bad games. Boston just got blown out by the rangers and islanders. It happens when teams have injuries.

 

[S E P H]

Is he really though? Who checks hard on that backend? The blackhawks are doing just fine because hes a borderline top 6 guy

i dont know how you can compare them

This is ridiculous, Saad is clearly an upgrade for the Avs than the player they previously had in that position and I say this as a big Vitamin Z fan. Zadorov didn't have a spot on the Avs line up, especially considering how much he was in Bednar's doghouse last season. The only situation which might fit your viewpoint is that majority of Avs injuries this season has happened on the backend, but that's more of a fluke than anything else.

 

[ViewsFromThe6ix]

They're only overrated if you thought they were winning the cup this year.

Underperforming due to a ridiculous amount of injuries isn't being overrated

Funny how injuries are a legit excuse for some teams, but not others. Leafs were missing their best two D and multiple top 9 forwards at the same time last season for weeks on end, but when that was brought up, it was "everyone deals with injuries", but with the Avs it's a legit excuse.

 

[NOTENOUGHJTCGOALS]

Funny how injuries are a legit excuse for some teams, but not others. Leafs were missing their best two D and multiple top 9 forwards at the same time last season for weeks on end, but when that was brought up, it was "everyone deals with injuries", but with the Avs it's a legit excuse.

There are a lot of Leaf haters on here. They will come into a totally unrelated thread and bring up the Leafs just to bash them. It disgusts me how often the Leafs are just brought up for no reason like this.

 

[BlueOil]

Funny how injuries are a legit excuse for some teams, but not others. Leafs were missing their best two D and multiple top 9 forwards at the same time last season for weeks on end, but when that was brought up, it was "everyone deals with injuries", but with the Avs it's a legit excuse.

it's not, but lots of avs fans push only that cause it's easy. it wasn't the only reason for their loss to dallas in the playoffs last year and sakic backed that up by trying to improve the defense in the offseason, but that's the only explanation you'll ever get it seems