A friend the other day suggested turning the Avalanche’s power play into something of a morbid drinking game.
There was only one rule: Every time the Avs cycle the puck with the extra man, you take a shot. I countered that he’d be sloshed by the first intermission and unconscious by the second.
“I think we should have a shooting mentality,” Victor Olofsson, the Avalanche’s amiable new winger, explained to me before Colorado hosted Anaheim late Tuesday night at Ball Arena. “But there are obviously times where you can find someone in a better spot to shoot the puck, and you want to look for that.
“Just shooting it and maybe getting a couple more ugly goals, just rebounds and tips, is going to help us too. So, I definitely agree that we could shoot the puck more.”
Olofsson’s Avs are, to use the scientific term, kind of … weird. But a good weird, like Matt Smith’s version of BBC’s “Doctor Who” — as opposed to a bad weird, like Matt Smith’s Daemon Targaryen from HBO’s “House of the Dragon.”
While the Western Conference is chasing Colorado, the Avs are chasing some seriously wacky history. Heading into the Ducks game, Colorado was averaging four goals per contest, tops in the league, putting them on a pace to score 328 goals on the season. All while, paradoxically, carrying around a 17.5% power-play conversion rate, which ranked 24th in the league as of Tuesday afternoon.
If that sounds quirky, it is. Per Sports-Reference.com, only one other NHL team has scored at least 328 times while also carrying a team power play conversion rate of under 18%: the 1992-93 Canucks (346 goals, PP of 17.3%). Those Canucks wound up getting knocked out of the ’93 division finals by Wayne Gretzky and the Kings.
Case in point — or rather, two points: Your Avs went to Edmonton last weekend, home of the two-time reigning Western Conference champs, and blitzed the Oilers by a 9-1 score. Your same Avs did this while somehow going 0 for 7 on the power play.
Again: Weird. Loco. Looney Tunes.
“Yeah, it’s kind of crazy,” second-line center Brock Nelson told me Tuesday. “Power play-wise, I mean, yeah, you look at the talent we have, and I think you can only expect the number to kind of keep creeping up and be a bigger factor for us.
“I think you look at an Edmonton game … and you look at the chances we had, the one-timers we had, some slot looks, it’s like, ‘OK, that could have easily been 2 for 7, 3 for 7, you’re getting the looks.’ So, it’s sticking with it … know that at any moment they could snowball and (we) go 4 for 5 and have a different conversation. I still think they’ve been generating a lot of momentum for us, so it’s been good.”
It’s also been curious. Savvy Avs observers have noted the absence (again) of Mikko Rantanen, a winger who gave the burgundy and blue three Hall-of-Fame marksmen on the PP1 unit, a weapon that discouraged penalty-killers from clinging too close to Nathan MacKinnon or Cale Makar. Rantanen, whose trade to Carolina last winter backfired in the playoffs, is still the Avs’ franchise leader in power-play goals since 2018-19, with 84, besting both MacKinnon (75) and Makar (41).
Maybe Marty Necas eventually fills that Moose-sized hole on Jared Bednar’s PP1. Maybe there’s more juice to be had from a big-bodied screener such as Val Nichushkin, mucking up a goalie’s sight lines, or from Artturi Lehkonen, a classic poacher and crease-wrecker down low.
Maybe there’s a wrinkle that makes us forget former Avs assistant coach Ray Bennett, the fall guy for Colorado’s 13.6% PP clip during that series loss to Dallas.
“I don’t know if it’s too different (from last season),” Nelson said of the Avs’ PP gameplan. “Obviously, you’re probably just figuring out different tendencies of guys. But I think it’s still just the same plan of attack and just trying to get inside. …
“I feel pretty confident the (conversion) number’s gonna go up. … There (are) gonna be games where we’re gonna go 3 for 4, 4 for 5, be a difference-maker. All of a sudden that (conversion) number at the end is obviously somewhere in the 20s. It looks better.”
It would be hard to look worse, mind you. For reference, the Avs posted conversion rates of at least 22% or better for five straight seasons before this one.
“If you look at it in different ways, it’s pretty impressive that we are where we are and not had a great power play so far,” Olofsson said. “I mean, I’d rather have it that way, that we have a really good 5-on-5 game and we don’t have to rely on the power play. But obviously, we want to step up in games that are tight.”
Does it matter? Well, yes. And no. Of the last 10 Western Conference representatives in the Stanley Cup Final, eight posted a regular-season PP conversion rate of 20% or better. Four of the 10 finished among the NHL’s top 10 that season, five were in the middle tier, and only one had a bottom-10 PP rate.
“Obviously, it’s fun that people care,” Olofsson said. “It wouldn’t be fun if no one cared, either. But no, it’s not a huge weight on us right now since we’re playing so well and winning games. But there are going to be times where (the power play) definitely needs to step up and win games for us. And I’m confident that we’re going to do it.”
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