Avalanche stay positive despite disappointing start

BROSSARD, Quebec -- The Colorado Avalanche went through a rare late-summer upheaval when Patrick Roy resigned as coach and vice president of hockey operations on Aug. 11, forcing general manager Joe Sakic to run a coaching search at a time of year when the best candidates are already off the market.
Sakic hired Jared Bednar two weeks later. With less than a month before the start of training camp it was hardly an ideal situation for an incoming coach.

Changes were expected in systems and playing style, and those changes have been made. But after 25 games, the Avalanche find themselves with exactly the same record they had at this point last season, 10-14-1.
Considering the Avalanche wound up missing the Stanley Cup Playoffs last season that could be seen as a negative. But center Nathan MacKinnon does not see it that way.
The Avalanche ended a six-game losing streak with a 4-2 win at the Boston Bruins on Thursday, so MacKinnon saw it as a positive sign that Colorado could still turn things around.

"Oh yeah?" MacKinnon said when he was informed of the Avalanche's record after 25 games last season. "It felt like we were doing worse this year. I mean, losing six straight and we have the same record is pretty impressive actually. We were in the playoffs at one point late in the season, then [Matt Duchene] and I got hurt with 10 games left, then we lost a few in a row. I'm not saying that's why, but that doesn't help. So that's exciting.
"It's a long year and we were in last place at one point last year as well, so hopefully we can get hot."
The Avalanche enter their game against the Montreal Canadiens at Bell Centre on Saturday (7 p.m. ET; SN360, CITY, TVA Sports, ALT) right where MacKinnon referenced; they're tied with the Arizona Coyotes for the fewest points with 21 and looking to climb out of a big hole.
Last season the Avalanche began winning games in mid-February, going 11-6-0 from Feb. 11 to March 20 to climb back into the Western Conference playoff picture, sitting one point ahead of the Minnesota Wild for the final wild card spot.
But MacKinnon and Duchene went down with knee injuries on March 18, and the Avalanche finished the season with one win in their final nine games and missed the playoffs for the second season in a row.
No team feels comfortable needing an incredibly hot second half to reach the playoffs, but there is a sense on the Avalanche that the best is yet to come, and it is because of the changes instituted by Bednar and his coaching staff.
"We really like the way he coaches," MacKinnon said. "We're not executing the system very well, that's why we're losing. We're making mistakes. If we were perfecting what he's teaching we'd be a much better team. There's a great system in place, we're a great skating group, a big group. We're just killing ourselves right now with our decisions. Once we clean that up and do what he's teaching us, it's going to go a long way."

Bednar did not disagree, pointing out that many of the scoring chances the Avalanche allow come off turnovers in their zone or what he described as soft plays.
"We've got to make teams earn everything they get," he said. "They're making us earn everything we get, so it has to be the same thing on both sides of the street."
As encouraged as MacKinnon was with where the Avalanche find themselves at this point in the season, Duchene did not see it the same way. He has been to the playoffs twice in his seven full seasons with the Avalanche and is eager to break that pattern in his eighth one while avoiding allowing frustration to take over.
"We're in kind of a similar position as last year where we're behind a little bit, but we want to climb back into it," Duchene said. "It [stinks] to be in this position. We've been in this position a lot in my career. I know I'm tired of not making the playoffs, and I know there's lots of guys in here that are, too. So we're just working every single day to try and get back in that race. You can't control yesterday, you can only control the present and tomorrow as well."

There have been key injuries to Duchene, defenseman Erik Johnson and captain Gabriel Landeskog, who expects to return Saturday after missing 10 games because of a lower-body injury. But Landeskog believes once the Avalanche start to grasp Bednar's system, things will start looking up.
"The new coach has done a good job, with the timing being what it was in August," Landeskog said. "I think Jared and [assistant coach] Nolan [Pratt] and the rest of the coaching staff have done a good job of establishing their clear system of how they want us to play. We're not making any excuses here, but that's something that can take a lot of time to get used to. There's been some games where we feel like we've figured it out, but then there are other games when we just have mental lapses and we make mistakes."

So there is a certain sense of encouragement on the Avalanche because those mistakes are correctable, but a sense of urgency exists as well. Any margin of error has been removed, and if it is indeed the need to grasp and perfect Bednar's system that is the big problem, it needs to happen now.
"It was a real big effort [Thursday] night in Boston and that's something we're hopefully looking to build on here," Landeskog said. "We have to build on it, we have to finish off this road trip on a good note."