I believe it was in 2016 that the Avalanches went 6-0 in the preseason and then ended up having a historically bad season (22-56-4). Actually historically the pre-season winner doesn't tend to do particularly well in regular season.
I don’t know if I buy that winning in the pre-season is historically bad for teams either, a pre-season record likely isn’t that meaningful. It’s like saying winning the President’s Trophy is bad for your playoff chances, it’s not, it just that having the best record in the NHL guarantees f*** all in the NHL.
Yes, of course I looked up the 2016-17 Colorado Avalanche. A big problem was Varlamov went 6-17-0 before getting hip surgery in late January for what was thought to be a groin injury.
Varlamov did win 1-3 against LA in the pre-season, Jeff Zatkoff (who ever that is) gave up 3 goals in the 1st period before being replaced by Jack Campbell in goal.
Varlamov also beat Minnesota 2-0 in his other win, in a game that Mikael Granlund, Eric Staal, Mikko Koivu, Charlie Coyle, Zach Parise, Ryan Suter and Jared Spurgeon didn’t play in.
They beat Dallas 1-0 and 4-2 too but the Stars were heading to their own implosion that season due to terrible goaltending plus the loss of several key defensemen.
The Avs had started the pre-season with 4-1 with a win against Wild and ended it with a 2-1 OT win against the Kings. I don’t think this points to performing well in the pre-season as a predictor of anything, these are scrimmages that coaches use to learn about players to make line-up decisions. These are incomplete line-ups often with a variety of goalies.
I suppose theoretically that coaches of bad teams might put more effort into winning in the pre-season, as a confidence booster. Plus they might tend to play all their young players more, while more veteran teams play veteran stars much less in the pre-season. I don’t know to what degree this is actually true and effects pre-season results.
We actually have had some predictive pre-seasons: we won our first three games in 2012-13, but the 3rd W was in OT, and then the last three games were a OT loss, SO loss and a final OT loss. Sure it was missing a regulation loss to really capture what was coming but not winning in extra time pretty much became our MO at that point.
We went 4-2 in 2013-14, only losing to the NYI and Montreal, which makes sense because the the Isles would finish with 5th worst record in the NHL. Brodeur lost both games.
We went 4-1-1 in the 2014-15 pre-season. We beat the NYR twice, including a 0-3 win, while losing to the Flyers 0-4, and then went 1-3 against the NYR and 3-1 against the Flyers that season. The pre-season games don’t even tell you much of anything about how the games against these specific teams will go. (We did win and lose in the SO in two pre-season games against the NYI though and then they were the only team we had two OT losses to.)
We weren’t good in 2015-16 pre-season, going 3-4, and we really stunk up the 2016-17 preseason, going 3-5.
And when we did a lot better in 2017-18, going 5-1-1, we actually did go on to have a much better season, with a more productive offense and other pleasantries.
And then going 2-2-2 in the 2018-19 pre-season, with the last win coming in OT against SC Bern, might have been a sign of the coming regression. Or just nothing.
We went 5-2 in the 2019-20 pre-season, with Cormier and Blackwood having the two losses. Senn won one, Blackwood won one and Schneider won three. Corey then infamously imploded against Winnipeg in the game opener. He did seem like a functional NHL goalie in the pre-season and then very much wasn’t until about February that season but Shero shouldn’t bet on what was the goalie version of fool’s gold at that point.
There are no generic pre-seasons and the winning doesn’t worry me. Right now there are things to really like about this pre-season, particularly with the offense, without putting much emphasis on the record itself. The fact that 5 of the goals we gave up have been on special teams (4PP & 1SH) is not surprising at all and is also concerning but I’m bracing for the PK to be a grisly work in progress.