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Colorado Avalanche: playing to an identity |
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The first two years of the reign of coch Joe Sacco behind the Colorado Avalanche bench have lacked one thing: a team identity.
For the first two years, the Avs just played the game the other team wanted to play. If the Chicago Blackhawks wanted to open things up and skate, the Avs would do that. If the Minnesota Wild wanted to shut things down and put teams to sleep, the Avs fell asleep.
Two years, the Avs fans endured the same storylines and the same tendencies. What's worse is that by the end of the season, teams would figure it out and the Avs would be helpless to defend themselves from the onslaught delivered by opposing teams.
Their lack of true team identity cost them wins and made for some very frustrating hockey for the fans to watch as the team they watched changed with each night.
Starting this year, the Avalanche had the same tendency. They came out to a 6-2 start and then went into a talespin. Around November, things looked truly bleak. As a team, they went 4-9-1 in the fourteen games of November and fell to 13th place in the conference. Calls for big trades and the firing of head coach Joe Sacco (specifically from yours truly) resonated across Twitter as fans were panicking.
After November, something happened to the Avs, something that changed the way they played entirely. During their eight game homestand, the Avs had a lot of time to practice, to work on their game. As a result of this practice, the Avs finally found something they were looking for since 2009, possibly even before that: an identity.
To find where this identity came from, we have to go back a full year, to when the Avs upgraded and supersized their defense, adding Ryan O'Byrne, Erik Johnson via trade and Jan Hejda and Shane O'Brien through free agency. They also upgraded their goaltending with the young and flashy Semyon Varlamov and the consistent veteran Jean-Sebastien Giguere.
All of the players above have helped the Avs develop an identity but O'Brien and Giguere have both stepped up to lead a young Avalanche team and teach them how to win. At the time when things seemed most bleak, Giguere stepped in and stopped the bleeding and was an IV to a wounded Avalanche team that allowed them to get back on their feet.
During the month of December where the Avs went 10-5, the Avs became a team that was tough, gritty and used their speed to force turnovers to lead to goals. The Avs finally realized their offensive skills were not the best in the league, that they were not even close.
Giguere led the Avs that month with a 5-2 record and a save percentage hovering around .940. Giguere's solid positioning and calmness in net allowed the defense to find their backbone and start defending the crease, pushing teams to the outside.
In front, O'Brien showed the Avs that no one goes near the goaltender without paying the price and every chance you get, you hit and you hit as hard as you can. Since then, Johnson, Hejda, O'Byrne and most certainly Quincey since he was reinstalled in the lineup, have followed suit.
Since they know they are not going to score 5-6 goals a game, the forwards, led by Jay McClement, Daniel Winnik, Ryan O'Reilly and rookie Gabriel Landeskog, have helped out the defense to keep the play to the perimeter and clear out any rebounds that might come, reducing the need for second chances.
December was the month where the Avs learned to play defense and learned to play as a team. Everyone, every player, skating for the same goal. The goal isn't a "W" or even a shootout, the goal is to have a "0" or a "1" on the opposing team's scoreboard. They know if they do that, it will result in a win more often than not.
Now the Avs play tough, they play physical and they never give up on a play. It is every player skating the full length of the ice, no one cherry picking or lollygagging back into the zone because they don't want to play defense.
The result? The Avs are in 9th place in the conference and tied with 8th place Los Angeles. It is only the half way mark of the Avs season but they are back in contention, though because they have played so many games and won so many in the shootout, they do not have a lot of the tiebreakers. Because of this, the Avs will probably have win about 60 percent of their remaining games to make it into the playoffs.
Even if they don't make the playoffs, a team playing like the Avs have will be fun to watch, whether they make the playoffs or not which is what the fans really want.
Time will tell if the Avs can continue playing this well, specifically against the really tough teams in the league, to see if they can keep their identity even against an opponent that has a lot of offensive skill. Fans won't have to wait long to find that out as the Avs play the Chicago Blackhawks on Friday.
Colorado Avalanche Blogger • 
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