Written by Liam McGuire at Bloguin
Patrick Roy looked like a genius in his first season as head coach of the Colorado Avalanche.
On paper, everything was awesome. Roy turned the Avs from a lottery team into a 50+ win team in one season and won the Jack Adams Award for Coach of the Year for his overwhelming success. But, the team’s underlining numbers all suggested it was mirage. The Avs were an abysmal team at even strength, giving up the fifth most shots, and had the third highest PDO (shooting percentage plus save percentage) in the league. The club’s stellar goaltending and ridiculously high shooting percentage at even strength suggested the team was more lucky than good, and that regression was bound to set in.
Fast-forward to last year, Colorado continued an ugly trend under Roy. The club somehow gave up even more shots at even strength, ranking third-worst in the league behind the catastrophically bad Buffalo Sabres and Toronto Maple Leafs, two teams who weren’t built to be title contenders. The Avs apparently were. They once against posted an unusually high PDO, but it wasn’t enough to save them, not qualifying for the playoffs, going from a 52-win club to a 39-win club.
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