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- Sep 18, 2006
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Didn't see a proper thread for my latest little piece I whipped up this morning, so decided to start a thread for it.
With the season starting tonight, I decided to come up with Five Bold Avalanche Predictions for this year.
http://whl-from-above.blogspot.ca/2014/10/five-bold-avalanche-predictions-for.html
What are your five bold predictions?
With the season starting tonight, I decided to come up with Five Bold Avalanche Predictions for this year.
http://whl-from-above.blogspot.ca/2014/10/five-bold-avalanche-predictions-for.html
The Colorado Avalanche kick off the 2014-15 NHL season tonight as they meet the Wild in Minnesota, the team who knocked them out of the 2014 NHL Playoffs. The two team’s will also meet on Saturday night in Denver in Colorado’s home opener.
It’s an exciting time of year for the fans of all 30 NHL clubs, as most are optimistic about making the playoffs and possibly making a run at the Stanley Cup. For the less optimistic fans, there is also the 2015 NHL Draft to be looking forward to. It’s a deep crop of prospects this year, headlined by a pair of franchise players in Jack Eichel and future number one pick Connor McDavid.
To help prepare for the puck drop on Colorado’s season I’ve decided to come up with five bold Avalanche predictions for 2014-15:
1. Two Avs will hit the 30-goal plateau. This might not seem that bold, but it kind of is based on recent Avalanche results. No player has scored 30 goals for this team over the past 8 seasons. The last time it happened was in 2006-07 when Joe Sakic (36 goals) and Milan Hejduk (35 goals) both eclipsed the mark. So who will accomplish it this year? There are obviously a lot of candidates. Ryan O’Reilly led the team with 28 last year, Gabriel Landeskog had 26, rookie Nathan MacKinnon had 24, while Canadian Olympian Matt Duchene had 23 while missing 11 games due to injury. The team also added Jarome Iginla in the summer, a player who has reached 30 goals in each of his past 13 full NHL seasons. This year I think Jarome makes it 14 straight 30 goal years, while MacKinnon also reaches the mark.
2. Reto Berra proves to be a competent backup. Yes, based on last year’s play, this prediction seems very bold. It’s no secret that he was flat out bad for Colorado after the Avalanche acquired him from Calgary last season. Not only that, but he was average, at best, for the Flames before the deal, too. Obviously Patrick Roy saw something in the athletic 6’4 goalie from Switzerland. When asked recently what Berra needed in his game going forward, Roy said it was confidence. He should have a bit more of that after a very solid pre-season in the Colorado cage, while also getting his tires pumped by his teammates and management throughout the past month. While I don’t think he’ll elevate his game to the level of an elite backup, I think fans should be thrilled if he can get his save percentage up above .910.
3. Zach Redmond will end up as the team’s 4th “most valuable†defenceman. Not much has been made about the free-agent signing of Zach Redmond. While the acquisition and extension of Brad Stuart has been widely publicized (and fairly criticized, in my opinion) the Redmond pickup seems like a nice little sleeper grab by Joe Sakic and his team of scouts. Redmond produced quite well in his minimal NHL experience last year, while also putting together a great AHL playoff run with St. John’s. He was signed by Colorado this summer and proceeded to have a great camp. While I say he had a great camp, he still looks to be one of the two odd-men out on the current defensive depth chart. The team is carrying 8 defencemen with Redmond and Ryan Wilson apparently being the two scratches for tonight’s season opener. While that’s the case right now, I think he’ll eventually play his way up that depth chart once he gets his shot. And while my bold prediction states he’ll be among the team’s top 4 most valuable defenders, that doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll play top 4 minutes, at least barring injury. Erik Johnson and Tyson Barrie headline the team’s defensive core, with veterans Jan Hejda and Stuart both expected to lead in a variety of ways. You also have a guy like Nick Holden, who burst onto the scene last year after he was expected to be a simple AHL depth signing. In this prediction I just think the team will get value out of Redmond’s 17 or 18 minutes a night when compared to what Stuart, Hejda and Holden bring in their 19 or 20 minutes a night. He’s big, he shoots hard, he skates well. If he can limit turnovers and just play average defence, he’ll be a very nice fit for the Avalanche this year. If it wasn’t for already having Johnson and Barrie down the right-hand side, I could see there being an argument that he should be seeing second-pairing opportunities by the mid-point of this season.
4. Joey Hishon will earn a late-season callup and fit in just fine. It’s been a long road for the former Avalanche 1st round pick. After years of concussion issues, he was finally healthy last year and put together a solid season. He then stepped into Colorado’s playoff lineup and didn’t look out of place. He followed that up with a good pre-season, good enough that he probably could have made the opening night roster. Instead, the team opted to take the slow and steady route with him, keeping big winger Dennis Everberg instead. At the end of the day, my bold prediction is that Hishon stays healthy and plays very well in the AHL, culminating with a callup to Colorado in the second half of the season. At that point in time, he’ll slide right into the lineup and never look back. I’ll also mention that I still think his future in the NHL will be on the wing, not at centre.
5. Nathan MacKinnon has an 80 point season and leads the team in scoring. This once again might not seem like that bold of a prediction, considering he had 63 in his rookie year. How hard could it be to add 17 more points in his second season? Well, you have to realize that only 7 players in the NHL had 80 or more points last year. Players like Alex Ovechkin, Jamie Benn, Evgeni Malkin, Nicklas Backstrom and Anze Kopitar didn’t even reach this mark. So, 80 points is kind of a big deal. I think we’ll see him get up to around 32 or 33 goals, adding nearly 50 assists, finishing top 10 in the NHL’s scoring race. Matt Duchene and MacKinnon should go toe-to-toe in the team scoring race all season, with Duchene finishing last year with an 80+ point pace before injury. This will be a fun storyline to watch, with these two stars being arguably the biggest bright spot this team has going for it over the next 5-10 years.
So aside from these predictions, what are my overall standing expectations for Colorado this year? First of all, put me in the group of people that is expecting some form of regression from the Avalanche. I know, I know, Corsi-this and Fenwick-that, but at the end of the day it’s not news to anyone that this team greatly exceeded expectations last year.
They didn’t play like a division-winning club, even though the results showed that they were.
With that being said, that doesn’t mean I think they will be a “worse†team than last year. Ultimately I think they have improved their forward depth (not as much as I would have liked, mind you) and their defensive group is definitely deeper than it was last year. While the loss of Paul Stastny is huge (due to him eating hard minutes against other big Western Conference centres) I think the improvement of the team’s young players will help curtail a big chunk of the expected regression. While I expect to see some minor drop off in Semyon Varlamov’s save-percentage this year, I think he’ll continue to justify his standing as a top 5-7 goalie in the NHL.
At the end of the day I think Colorado is a team that sneaks into the playoffs and gives a team a run for their money in the first round. Because at that point they’ll be a team that will be going in with fewer expectations and more experience than they had last year.
What are your five bold predictions?
