Sakic Reflects On 2017-18 Season

As the Colorado Avalanche enters the offseason after falling 4-2 in its first-round postseason series with the Nashville Predators, Avs executive vice president and general manager Joe Sakic reflected on the improvement he saw from his club in the last 12 months.
The Avalanche refocused last summer and battled to qualify for the Stanley Cup Playoffs this campaign for the first time since 2014, just a year after finishing the season with 48 points.
"Obviously, we knew last year that we had to get through the year to start fresh, and we did that. Not going to lie to you, we feel a lot better this year than we did last year at that point but, it was Year One of this," Sakic said. "We got a great group of guys. I know things were really, really tough last year, but the guys that came back, we have some really good players that came back.
"They were prepared all last summer… The effort and the commitment that the players, the returning players, had in the summer and training camp and throughout, there was a different mindset. I am really proud of those guys and obviously the new guys that came in, the character guys, and the belief in each other and the will to find ways to win games. It's impressive."

The Avalanche finished the 2017-18 season with 95 points, increasing its production by 47 points from the year prior.
Colorado closed the book to the 2016-17 campaign last April and set out to start fresh by building a youthful team with a competitive attitude and a drive to win.

"I think we had 12, 13 new guys this year, we had an overhaul, but I mean its 180 degrees. Last year at the end of the year, glad it's over and you can start fresh, start from the beginning," Sakic said after the season came to an end. "This is our first year, but the excitement that this group brought to Denver, brought to the fans. And you can see, like I said, the last couple months of the season, fans really appreciated that, and the players captured their hearts."
The Avalanche is the first NHL team to post a 40-plus point improvement from one season to the next since the Pittsburgh Penguins also jumped 47 points from 2005-06 (58) to 2006-07 (105). The turnaround is tied for the fourth-highest, year-to-year improvement in NHL history (80-plus game seasons only).
With a newfound abundance of youth in the locker room, the Avs dressed 11 different rookies in 2017-18, the most in Colorado history and the second in the NHL. The group combined for 419 games, tops in the league, and the most ever by an Avalanche rookie class.
Sakic said the focus going forward is going to be much of the same, with youth continuing to be injected into the lineup and an emphasis on speed.

"The key for us is we are going to stay the course. We had an amazing, amazing year from our guys," Sakic said of what needs to be done this offseason. "We have a young team. It's not like our guys are going to be seven-year pros all of a sudden next year for some of our younger players. We expect growth from them, but I mean we are going to stay young. In the next couple years, we may even get younger with some of our guys. We want to, if we can, even try and get a little bit quicker and faster out there.
"We love the way we play the game, it's fast, it's entertaining. You see the Pepsi Center here, especially the last couple months with a new generation of fans, the building has been alive, back to where it once was. It's exciting, we know the fans here are excited about this group. This group of players, they believe in each other and there's no quit. They play hard, and we want to keep that. The dressing room had great chemistry, and we want to make sure that whatever we do the chemistry in the dressing room is good."
With their backs against the wall, the Avs repeatedly proved themselves as a force to be reckoned with and did it without top defenseman Erik Johnson and No. 1 goalie Semyon Varlamov for much of the season, including the final weeks.
Colorado competed in a winner-take-all matchup with the St. Louis Blues in Game 82 on April 7 and convincingly won 5-2 at Pepsi Center to earn a berth into the postseason.
The squad faced the Presidents' Trophy-winning Predators in Round 1 of the Stanley Cup Playoffs and came back from a 1-0 deficit in Game 5 to win the contest 2-1 in regulation at Bridgestone Arena. The victory stretched the matchup to six games, the longest first-round series in the Western Conference.
"They battled adversity all year, it didn't matter who was hurt. They stuck together, they found a way to win games, get in the playoffs, and except for [Game 6] where I think we run out of gas, it was a heck of a series by our guys," said Sakic. "All teams have injuries this time of year and you have to deal with them, and our guys played hard. They believed in each other, and we went to Game 6. Overall, over the course of the year, really proud of this group. They did an amazing job."

Colorado had nine players make their debut in the Stanley Cup Playoffs during the series and the experience gained will be invaluable for the Avalanche moving forward.
The Avs ended the season as the NHL's youngest team with a mean age of 25.8 years old. Although roster age averages fluctuated throughout the season, the Avs were one of the youngest squads for much of the year at around 26 years old.
"Our pro and amateur scouts are going to come in here, and we are going to reevaluate this team and where we can get better going forward and what we need to do, or what we are going to try to do," Sakic said. "That's where we are going to be going with this, get ready for the draft, free agency and whatever other opportunity comes to help us out. Make no mistake, we aren't going to chase it. We are going to stay the course and keep letting this team grow because they deserve it."
Looking forward, the skill and compete level will continue to rise while the ultimate goal remains the same as it always has been: making the playoffs to have a chance to win the Stanley Cup.
"The next level is just to keep growing. They earned respect for themselves from the rest of the league this year, and just keep trying to get better and growing together and get their game at another level," Sakic said of his group. "We have a young team and some of these guys are going to get better. They learned a lot. It was great getting into the playoffs, just to feel that different level, where you have to go emotionally, the intensity goes up.
"I was really proud of them, but we also can't take it for granted. This is a tough league, we are in a tough division. Everybody else is going to get better, and I believe these guys know that there is a lot of work to do in the summer and getting ready for next year."