Patrick Roy looked like a genius in his first season as head coach of the Colorado Avalanche.
On paper, everything was awesome. Roy turned the Avs from a lottery team into a 50+ win team in one season and won the Jack Adams Award for Coach of the Year for his overwhelming success. But, the team’s underlining numbers all suggested it was mirage. The Avs were an abysmal team at even strength, giving up the fifth most shots, and had the third highest PDO (shooting percentage plus save percentage) in the league. The club’s stellar goaltending and ridiculously high shooting percentage at even strength suggested the team was more lucky than good, and that regression was bound to set in.
Fast-forward to last year, Colorado continued an ugly trend under Roy. The club somehow gave up even more shots at even strength, ranking third-worst in the league behind the catastrophically bad Buffalo Sabres and Toronto Maple Leafs, two teams who weren’t built to be title contenders. The Avs apparently were. They once against posted an unusually high PDO, but it wasn’t enough to save them, not qualifying for the playoffs, going from a 52-win club to a 39-win club.
It’s been more of the same in 2015-16. Despite a limited sample size, the Avs have continued to be a disaster at even strength, giving up a staggering 32.7 SA/60. – the third worst mark in the NHL. It’s eight games in (2-5-1), but the Avs already have a -50 shot differential at even strength. That’s impressively bad. Colorado’s horrendous differential under Roy is evident in this graph by TSN.ca’s Travis Yost. It looks like a ski-hill.
— Travis Yost (@travisyost) October 19, 2015
Roy has been a combatant of analytics, which makes sense, considering they all suggest he’s horrible at doing his job. As Yost’s graph’s points out, with each game Roy coaches his team routinely gets outshot at even strength, with no marked improvement at any point during his tenure with the Avalanche. The number just keeps getting worse and worse. Now, to be fair to Roy his club’s defense is mediocre, but as Yost points out, he’s a culprit in its undoing. He’s paired Tyson Barrie, by far the best defenseman the Avs have, with mediocre defense partners.
Goaltending has kept them afloat. In 2014-15, among all goaltenders who played at least 2000 minutes, Semyon Varlamov faced 31.69 SA/60, the most in the NHL. With the heavy workload, his .917 Sv% ranked 23rd in the league among goalies in the same category. The number was a considerably down from the .937 even strength Sv% he posted in 2013-14 during the Avs heyday, which makes sense given Varlamov’s reoccurring groin injuries. He’s struggled at even strength this season. In five games the Russian netminder (SSS) has posted a .876 Sv% on 30.67 SA/60. Should Varlamov struggle, the Avs are going to give up a ton of goals.
The Avalanche offense features some nice young players like Matt Duchene, Nathan MacKinnon and Gabriel Landeskog, but outside that group the club is comprised off declining veterans like Jarome Iginla, Carl Soderberg and Alex Tanguay, and a lot of fringe NHLers. The offense has the potential to be dynamic, but they don’t help the team out defensively.
As long as Roy is the coach, the Avs are unlikely to improve at even strength. They’ve been routinely outshot, and unless you’re getting magnificent Carey Price-esque goaltending, winning isn’t sustainable. I’m not sure Roy will be on the hot seat considering his ties to the hockey town, but the Avs can’t play defense to save their lives, and in the NHL that’s a huge concern.
