Return to Play: Avalanche Finishes Second in West

NHL commissioner Gary Bettman announced on Tuesday afternoon that the 2019-20 regular season is now concluded and 24 teams will compete for the Stanley Cup in the league's
Return to Play Plan
.
The Colorado Avalanche played 70 of its 82 scheduled games and last skated in a 3-2 overtime victory against the New York Rangers on March 11--the league paused the season the next day due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Avs finished with a 42-20-7 record and completed the campaign in second place in the Western Conference with a points percentage of .657. The St. Louis Blues (42-19-10) took first with a .662 percentage, having played one more contest than Colorado.
The Avalanche tied for the third-best points percentage in the league and finished with the best goal differential in the Western Conference and third-best in the NHL at plus-46.

Points percentage was used to determine the 12 teams from each conference that will compete for this year's Stanley Cup, and the Avs will join the Blues, fellow Central-Division rival Dallas Stars (.594) and the Pacific Division's Vegas Golden Knights (.606) in a round-robin series to determine the top four seeds for the 2020 Stanley Cup Playoffs.
The other eight clubs from the Western Conference will face off in a qualifying round that will be a best-of-five series and includes the Edmonton Oilers (.585), Nashville Predators (.565), Vancouver Canucks (.565), Calgary Flames (.564), Winnipeg Jets (.563), Minnesota Wild (.558), Arizona Coyotes (.529) and Chicago Blackhawks (.514). Playoff OT rules will be in effect for those qualifying contests, while the round-robin games will feature regular-season OT rules.
The remaining seven NHL clubs that are done playing in 2019-20 and the eight teams that lose in the qualifying round will be part of the 2020 Draft Lottery for the top three picks in this year's draft.
Bettman said that no specific dates, times or sites have been chosen for the playoffs or qualifying rounds, but he did mention there will be two hub cities featuring exclusively Western Conference and Eastern Conference teams. The cities that are in contention are Chicago, Columbus, Dallas, Edmonton, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Pittsburgh, Toronto and Vancouver.
The
announced plan
has been approved by the NHL's Board of Governors as well as the NHL Players' Association.
"At the pause, we committed to resuming play only when appropriate and prudent," said Bettman in the NHL's release. "We are hopeful the Return to Play Plan will allow us to complete the season and award the Stanley Cup in a manner in which the health and safety of our players, on-ice officials, team staff and associated individuals involved are paramount. Accordingly, an essential component of the Plan is a rigorous, regular schedule of testing."

With the regular season now officially concluded, Nathan MacKinnon finishes as the Avalanche's leading scorer for the fourth straight campaign, recording 35 goals and 58 assists for 93 points. MacKinnon played in each of the first 69 games of the year before missing Colorado's last contest on March 11 with a lower-body injury. He was on pace for a 108-point campaign, which would have been the most by an Avs player since Joe Sakic had 118 points (54 goals, 64 assists) during the club's Stanley Cup championship campaign of 2000-01.
MacKinnon surpassed the 90-point mark for a third consecutive season, becoming the first Avalanche player to accomplish the feat since the team moved to Denver in 1995. He finished fifth overall in league scoring, ninth in goals and sixth in assists. The center led the entire NHL with 318 shots on goal, set a career high with 29 multi-point games and tied his personal best with 58 helpers, a mark he reached in each of the previous two years. He joined Sakic (2003-2007) as the only Colorado players to post three straight campaigns of 30 or more goals.

After MacKinnon missed the last game of the year with an injury, Colorado only had two players that appeared in every 2019-20 regular season game for the club. Forward Matt Nieto registered 21 points (eight goals, 13 assists), while defenseman Samuel Girard registered a career-high 34 points with four goals and 30 assists. Girard is the team's current ironman, having appeared in all of the team's 220 regular-season games since being acquired in a trade on Nov. 5, 2017; it's the third-longest consecutive game streak ever by an Avs blueliner.
Rookie Cale Makar finished second in scoring behind MacKinnon and led all club defensemen with 50 points (12 goals and 38 assists) in 57 outings. Makar reached the half-century mark with a three-assist performance in the team's March 11 contest against the Rangers and finishes first among all league rookies in points per game at 0.88 and game-winning goals (four). Only fellow rookie rear guard Quinn Hughes of the Canucks had more points with 53, but he recorded those points in 11 more games than Colorado's freshman.
Makar is the first Avalanche rookie to record at least 50 points in a season since MacKinnon had 63 points in 2013-14, and he is the only defenseman in franchise history to reach the mark during his rookie campaign. The Calgary, Alberta, native also set franchise rookie records for goals and assists by a D-man.

For most of the season, Makar was paired with second-year defenseman Ryan Graves and the duo was one of the best in the league in creating offense. Graves finishes first in the NHL with a plus/minus rating of plus-40, becoming the first Colorado player to lead the league in the category since Milan Hejduk and Peter Forsberg were both a plus-52 in 2002-03.
The Avs had three players end the regular season with a plus-20 rating or better as Valeri Nichushkin finished at plus-26 and Ian Cole wrapped up the year at plus-21. Only the Tampa Bay Lightning (six) and Boston Bruins (five) had more players with a plus-20 rating or higher.
Four skaters that were new to the Avalanche this season produced some of the best years of their careers. Pierre-Edouard Bellemare posted new personal bests in goals (nine), assists (13) and points (23), Andre Burakovsky had new career highs with 45 points, 20 goals and 25 assists, Joonas Donskoi registered a new high with 16 goals and Nichushkin's 13 goals were the second-most of his NHL career. Vladislav Namestnikov, who was acquired at the trade deadline on Feb 24, had five points (four goals, one assist) in his eight games with the Avs.

Philipp Grubauer and Pavel Francouz led Colorado for most of the year in net, but Adam Werner, Antoine Bibeau and Michael Hutchinson also guarded the pipes in games this year to help make this year's Avs team the first one in franchise history to feature wins from five different goaltenders. Grubauer posted an 18-12-4 record, 2.63 goals-against average, .916 save percentage and two shutouts, while Francouz registered a 21-7-4 mark, 2.41 goals-against average, .923 save percentage and a shutout in his first NHL campaign.
The Avalanche wrapped up the regular season with its third-straight campaign of 90 or more points. The squad also won 24 games on the road this year, tied for the second-most in franchise history behind the 26 victories of the 2013-14 club; Colorado had four more road games remaining on its schedule. The Avs produced a nine-game road win streak from Feb. 4 to March 2, which was longest in franchise history and tied for the longest in the NHL this year with the New York Rangers (Jan. 16-Feb. 27).
Picking up wins in bunches was a common theme for the 2019-20 Avalanche. The team won its first five games and went 7-0-1 to open the season. Colorado then went 8-0-1 from Nov. 27-Dec. 13, which included six wins in a row to start, and the Avs produced another five-game win streak during an 8-1-2 run from Jan. 10-Feb. 11. Colorado won a season-high seven games in a row from Feb. 19-March 2 and was one of the hottest teams in the NHL at the time of the pause, going 9-2-2 in its final 13 outings.
In fact, in the final two months of the season from Jan. 10 to March 11, no NHL team picked up more points than the Avs as they went 17-5-4 and earned 38 points in 26 contests.
The Avalanche aims to have that success translate once games hopefully return later this summer.