Avalanche Must Survive Injury Crisis to Save Stanley Cup Dream – The Hockey Writers Colorado Avalanche Latest News, Analysis & More

The tale of the Colorado Avalanche‘s 2024-25 season to date has been one of streaks. The team first struggled out of the gate and lost four straight games in regulation to open the campaign while being outscored 25-13. A 4-3 overtime win against the Anaheim Ducks kickstarted a five-game winning streak where they outscored their opponents by a 22-11 margin and vaulted the Avalanche back into a playoff spot.

Now, a pair of 5-2 losses at the hands of the Chicago Blackhawks and the Tampa Bay Lightning have initiated another losing streak and pushed the team out of the playoff picture once again, with their 5-6-0 record and .455 points percentage (PTS%) sitting in the bottom half of the league-wide standings.

Related: Colorado Avalanche Can Afford Slow Start to 2024-25 NHL Season

The Avalanche’s fearsome triumvirate of defenseman Cale Makar (four goals and 19 points in 11 games), reigning Hart Trophy winner Nathan MacKinnon (five goals and 18 points in 11 games), and the sharp-shooting Mikko Rantanen (four goals and 15 points in 11 games) has led the way, but it hasn’t been enough to overcome Colorado’s deficiencies elsewhere.

While goaltender Alexandar Georgiev’s struggles are well documented, a crisis on the injury front has been the main driver of the Avalanche’s on-ice misfortunes. If the team fails to wade through uncertain waters and emerge unscathed, another season which began with dreams of winning this core’s second Stanley Cup will end in frustrating disappointment – let’s dive in.

While the Avalanche are already among the league leaders in raw man-games lost, adjusting for the caliber of absent players paints an even bleaker picture. Only the basement-dwelling San Jose Sharks rank worse by cumulative Cap Hit of Injured Players (CHIP) – the per-game cap hit of a player missing a game through injury or illness – according to NHL Injury Viz. The current list of players who are either injured or unavailable is long and dotted with marquee names.

Captain Gabriel Landeskog hasn’t played since Game 6 of the 2022 Stanley Cup Final, and still lacks a firm timeline for his return after a long road of rehabilitation. Valeri Nichushkin is still serving a six-month suspension that is set to expire in mid-November, but he requires approval from the NHL before he can return to the Avalanche lineup. Artturi Lehkonen has yet to play this season and has struggled to stay healthy over the past two seasons, but was cleared to return on Tuesday (Nov. 5) against the Seattle Kraken. Jonathan Drouin played on opening night, suffered an upper-body injury, and has not played since. He is only listed as day-to-day, however, and should be back soon.

While the Avalanche received good news about Lehkonen, both Ross Colton (expected to miss six to eight weeks) and Miles Wood (expected to miss seven to 10 days) were reported to have sustained injuries that will keep them out of the lineup for at least the next few games. Colton’s absence in particular will sting, as the forward is in a tie for third in the league with eight goals in 10 games and has provided desperately needed offensive support behind the big three.

The problem has become so magnified that defenseman Oliver Kylington lined up as a forward against the Lightning in a move that was highly emblematic of the team’s luck in the injury department. It’s no surprise that they were outscored 2-0 when he was on the ice at five-on-five.

Insider Elliotte Friedman reported that the Avalanche are looking to trade for forwards as the likes of Ivan Ivan, Joel Kiviranta, and Parker Kelly are, like Kylington, also assuming greatly elevated roles in the lineup. Lehkonen (62-point pace), Drouin (57), and Nichushkin (57) have all been key secondary scorers over their Avalanche tenures, so their combined absence has single-handedly kneecapped the team’s depth in one fell swoop.

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The lack of forward depth hasn’t hampered the Avalanche’s ability to dictate play as they have controlled 54.3% share of shots, 54.6% of high-danger chances, and 54.3% of expected goals at five-on-five, all of which are top 10 marks in the NHL after the first month of play. That the team has been outscored 17-9 when Makar, MacKinnon, and Rantanen are all off the ice is a gruesome statistic, but one that is more down to the poor play in the crease (.835 team save percentage) than the injuries themselves. That doesn’t offer much reassurance, even if the team’s playoff chances remain strong.

Both of the projection models presented by MoneyPuck (73%) and The Athletic (85%) (from ‘NHL 2024-25 Stanley Cup playoff chances and projected standings’ – Dom Luszczyszyn – The Athletic – 11/01/2024) still believe that the Avalanche are more likely than not to make the playoffs. It’s not of much solace during the current period of distress, but should remind fans that there is a ton of runway left.

Trouble Ahead for Shorthanded Avalanche

While an optimist may claim that the Avalanche have done well to tread water during the injury crisis and that there are 71 games left to be played, a pessimist might point to the quality of the team’s remaining schedule as cause for concern.

According to Tankathon’s strength-of-schedule (SOS) metric, the Avalanche still have 26 combined games against the top 10 teams by PTS%, a total which represents over a third of their remaining schedule. That tally includes a combined seven against the league-leading Winnipeg Jets and a Dallas Stars club which eliminated them from last season’s playoffs.

If the Avalanche can stay within striking distance of the playoffs after November, they should be in a good position to challenge for one of the Western Conference’s top seeds over the rest of the season. Nine of their 14 games next month come against teams ranked 10th or better in the league by PTS%, with three of the other five set to come against a pair of underwhelming teams which entered the season with Stanley Cup aspirations in the Edmonton Oilers (18th by PTS%) and the Nashville Predators (30th).

Plenty of teams over the years have shown that a poor start to the season is not a death knell for one’s Stanley Cup hopes and the Avalanche have demonstrated the ability to dig themselves out of an early hole, but they might need more than historical precedent to successfully overcome the current crisis.

Data courtesy of Evolving Hockey, Natural Stat Trick, and the NHL.