Avalanche Journal: Avs can be comeback kings, but slow starts are big problem

RALEIGH, N.C. — The Avalanche, despite all of the injuries and goaltending issues, is one of the best teams in the NHL from the start of the second period until near the end of regulation.

That’s a pretty misleading way to try to say something nice ahead of what has become a real problem: The Avs are among the worst teams in the NHL in the first period.

Colorado has allowed 42 goals in the first period this year entering the weekend. The next-closest teams are San Jose (39) and then Pittsburgh (30). The Avs have scored 22, which is tied for 17th. Their goal differential (minus-20) only trails the Sharks and only after San Jose got blitzed by Tampa Bay in the first period Thursday night.

“Yeah, it doesn’t help you out,” Avs defenseman Devon Toews said of the slow starts. “If you’re not going to be consistent in this league, you’re not going to win.”

In most cases, a team allowing more goals in one period or scoring a lot more in another can be just coincidence or noise — a short-term trend that will normalize over a larger sample size. The extreme outliers deserve a little more investigation.

Colorado has now essentially played one-third of its season after a 5-3 loss Thursday night to the Carolina Hurricanes. And allowing 12 more goals in the first period than the third-worst team in the league in that department qualifies as extreme.

“It’s definitely not (a recipe for success),” Avs coach Jared Bednar said after his team rallied to win from four goals down after the first period Tuesday night in Buffalo. “We’ve talked a lot about it. I feel like recently we’ve played some good first periods, we’ve been in hockey games. All you can do is address it and make sure the guys are mindful of it.”

The Avs have led at the first intermission five times in 27 games, been level in five games and trailed a whopping 17 times.

Colorado is 5-0 when it leads after 20 minutes, one of five teams that has not lost in that scenario. The obvious problem is it has happened only five times.

Conversely, the Avs do have a league-leading seven victories when they trail at the first intermission. But, they also lead the league in losses when trailing after 20 minutes (10). Winning 41.2% of the time in that scenario is a good thing. Being forced into chasing the final two periods so often is clearly not.

It’s gotten worse as the season has progressed. Colorado started the season with five straight first-period deficits, then ripped off four strong first periods in a row during what became a five-game winning streak.

Since then, the Avs are 1-12-5 in the first period. The only time they’ve led after 20 minutes was Nov. 5 at home against Seattle. That’s 14 consecutive games — more than half, so far — without leading after the first period.

One obvious reason for the Avs’ issues in the first period is goaltending. Bednar has pulled his starting goalie five times in 27 games. He’s not been known as a coach with a quick hook — the Avs pulled the goalie only six times all of last season, and three of those came in the final 20 minutes.

The Avs have produced 24.78 expected goals in the first period and yielded 26.06. The gap between that and the actual goals scored (22 for, 42 against) does help explain a lot of the problem here, but not all of it.

Colorado has collected 54.9% of the shot attempts and 52.9% of the expected goals after the first period this season. Those numbers would rank third and seventh in the NHL, respectively. Some of that is certainly due to score — teams that trail are expected to push harder for more offense.

But, the Avs have also just not been The Avs in the first period this year. They have collected 49.05% of the shot attempts and 48.74% of the expected goals. Those numbers would be 16th and 22nd, respectively. Trim the sample size down to just the Avs’ last 14 games, and they have just 45.8% of the shot attempts in the first period, which would rank 28th.

Scott Wedgewood’s performance Thursday night at Carolina was an example of the goalie propping up a sluggish team, not what has happened too often for the Avs before he arrived. But the Avs, unlike the game before in Buffalo, were not able to snap out of the first-period funk in time for it to matter.

“Well, that slow start lasted 45 minutes,” Bednar said of the performance in North Carolina. “That wasn’t really a slow start — that was them just outplaying us. We’ve been talking about that. I’m not going to keep regurgitating it every day.”

This is yet another area where the Avalanche’s goaltending and availability issues are a big part of the problem. Not being healthy is hurting the club’s chances of just outscoring the issue.

Getting healthy should help. Getting better goaltending certainly would help.

But there’s no guarantee that either of those things will happen, so the healthy, non-goalie-pads-wearing members of the Avalanche are going to need to figure out how to be better at the start of games before it is too late.

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