The avs have struggled even more than they should be struggling this year because MacKinnon, Landeskog, O'Reilly, and now Duchene are all playing well below where they should be. Landy and ROR in particular have been awful this year, while MacK is going through the growing pains of learning to be a top 6 Center in the NHL after spending most of last year either on Landy-Stastny's right wing, or centering a sheltered third line. EJ and Barrie on the other hand are playing even better than last year, John Mitchell was playing even better than last year and cementing himself as a quality third line C, Redmond on the third pairing has been every bit as good as I expected for a third pairing PMD/PP-specialist, Pickard has filled in admirably while Varly's been hurt, and Patrick has managed to get even Stuart to play better than I've seen from him in the past 4 years before he got hurt.
My only gripes with Roy have been how long it took him to switch our defensive system at the start of the season, and his decision to buttbuddy Iginla with Landy-MacK rather than putting tanguay in that spot and having Iginla join ROR-Duchene. Maybe a couple of the call ups, but those aren't a big deal and I even like his decisions if they were made to let our top prospects stay focused on improving their play at a level they are comfortable at while less significant pieces to the long term puzzle dealt with being yanked around.
That said he seems to have a great relationship with our kids to keep them from getting too down on themselves, he's shown a real gift for squeezing the best out of dmen, and the work Allaire and Tourigny have been doing under him has been great stuff, see Pickard's development and our PK.
Only reason he was considered good was because of Varlamov. Terrible coach.
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I haven't watched enough of the Avs to feel strongly one way or another about how good of a coach Roy is, but I think their problems this year have more to do with their roster changes from last year.
It's not even the swap of Staz and Iggy, the biggest issue this year has been our best forwards not playing like our best forwards. Tanguay has been without question our best forward this season, and Briere's the only other guy who's having even just a good season, by his standards/expectations.
Underperforming is an interesting word. In the few games I have seen there was a serious lack of effort from many of the Avalanche players.
Our best forwards have been out of form this season, well Duchene was awesome for the first 15 games or so until Landy and MacK were put on his wings for a few games. But I don't think the problem is the effort, I think it's the pressure of expectations, frustration building up, confidence imploding, and the team just not playing as loose as they did last year all while dealing with some growing pains and the rest of the league being more aware of what our players can do. Add in a little sophomore slump for MacK, Varly getting hurt, Stuart getting hurt, the barrage of injuries to our bottom 6, plus I'm starting to suspect Landeskog is hiding an injury based on how much weaker he's been on his skates this year, and the things that are going wrong have just been snowballing to sap whatever confidence the team is able to generate.