Winners in three of their past four games, the Colorado Avalanche have been one of their biggest surprises of the NHL season so far.
Colorado has already won half as many games as it did all of last season and is one point shy of reaching half its points with still three quarters of the regular season remaining. The Avs' 48 points in 2016-17 were 21 points fewer than the next team in the Western Conference.
There are several reasons for Colorado's turnaround, but the biggest reasons has been offense; the Avalanche scored the fewest goals of any team (165) in the League last season but have jumped up to seventh in the NHL so far in 2017-18 (68) and is on pace to score more than 100 more goals this year than last.
Colorado's young core offensively took a hit when it traded away centerman Matt Duchene earlier this month, but others have helped pick up the slack. Nathan MacKinnon leads the team with 25 points in 20 games, including 18 assists. Mikko Rantanen has 19 points while captain Gabriel Landeskog leads the team with nine goals and has 16 points.
Six Avs players have scored at least five goals while none have reached double figures.
Semyon Varlamov has seen a bulk of the starts in goal, going 7-4-1 in 12 starts and posting a 3.23 goals-against average and a .903 save percentage. While those numbers rank near the bottom of the League among NHL starters, they're actually significantly better than they were last season, when Colorado allowed more goals than any team in the NHL.
