The first 10 games of the 2023-24 season have been a bit of a roller coaster for the Colorado Avalanche. The wins have been high-flying (and high-scoring), but the losses have seen them get hammered without much offensive punch.
There’s still a long way to go before the dust settles on this campaign, but any team would take a 7-3 start – particularly when just three of those games have been at home. Here’s a look at three things that stood out through Colorado’s first 10 contests.
Rantanen Keeps Up the Pace
If you are an NHL fan who didn’t know who Mikko Rantanen was before last season, we welcome you out from under your rock. Rantanen was electric in 2022-23, scoring 55 goals on the way to 105 points last season. He’s kept up that pace through the early stages of 2023-24, notching six goals and 14 points. That puts him a little bit ahead of the point-scoring pace he posted last season. Rantanen’s six goals lead the team, and his eight assists are tied for the team lead with Nathan MacKinnon.
The soft-spoken superstar recently played his 500th NHL game, and the 27-year-old shows no signs of slowing down. His 226 career goals are eighth on the franchise’s all-time list, and he will likely move up to sixth on that list this season. Barring injury, he has a chance to pass Gabriel Landeskog (248) and Anton Stastny (252). He currently sits 62 goals behind MacKinnon in fifth, but he’ll be hard-pressed to make up much ground while his linemate is still active.
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Fresh off his first 50-goal season, it’s no surprise that Rantanen is in the thick of things for the Avalanche’s 7-3 start, or that he’s leading the team in scoring. He has been the team’s top scorer for two of the last three seasons. MacKinnon’s monster 111-point year last season finally knocked Rantanen off the top spot, even though he finished just six points behind MacKinnon. If Colorado’s quality start is any indication, Rantanen could be in store for another big year.
Drouin Experiment Quickly Collapsing
One of the more notable acquisitions in the offseason for the Avalanche was the signing of Jonathan Drouin to a one-year contract. While the deal was just for $825,000 for the single season, there was a lot of talk about how Drouin and MacKinnon had history together from their days in juniors. Drouin was slotted into the left wing spot on the top line, beginning the season as the replacement for Landeskog – who is out for the year following continuing issues with his knee.
What everybody seemed to forget was that those days with the Halifax Mooseheads might as well be a million years ago. It was also forgotten that Drouin hasn’t been an offensive threat for years. He’s managed just 17 goals over the last four years combined and hasn’t eclipsed 30 points in any of those seasons. He started out remarkably slow, considering he was paired up with MacKinnon and Rantanen and has managed just one point in nine games this season.
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It started promising, with Drouin assisting on a first-period goal in the team’s opener. But he hasn’t recorded a point since, and he was a healthy just eight games into the season. He’s been dropped to the second line in favor of the high-flying Artturi Lehkonen, but that probably spells even more trouble. If you can’t get on the scoresheet with MacKinnon and Rantanen next to you, something’s wrong. There’s still time for him to turn it around, but the minutes will almost certainly continue to dwindle for Drouin.
All Avalanche Losses Are Shutouts
They say the easiest way to beat your opponent is to keep them from scoring. The Avalanche are taking that a bit too seriously in the early stages of this season. Colorado has gone a nifty 7-3 to start the campaign – including a six-game winning streak. However, all three losses have something in common: They’re all shutouts. The Avs were shut out just four times all of last season. The fact that all three losses are shutouts is likely an anomaly, but it’s an interesting glimpse at a strange trend.
The good news is that if it takes a shutout to beat the Avalanche, the losses should be few and far between. Colorado is eighth in the Western Conference in goals scored, but all seven teams in front of them have played more games. Considering that three of Colorado’s games didn’t feature a single goal, it makes what they did in their seven wins particularly impressive. The Avalanche have scored at least four goals in six of their seven victories, averaging 4.6 goals in their wins this season.
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The high-scoring trend in the wins makes the shutout losses even more vexing. Colorado outshot their opponents in two of the three losses, and even put up 41 shots on target in the 7-0 loss to the Vegas Golden Knights on Nov. 4. That shows the offense is there, it’s just a matter of converting chances. Despite those losses, Colorado is still off to one of the better starts in the NHL, but consistency will be the key. After all, the Avs started 4-5-1 through 10 games when they went on to win the Stanley Cup two seasons ago. It’ll be a matter of gaining that momentum over the next few months if they want to get back to that space.