Nov 23, 2025; Chicago, Illinois, USA; Colorado Avalanche defenseman Cale Makar (8) celebrates with teammates after scoring against the Chicago Blackhawks during the second period at United Center. Mandatory Credit: Kamil Krzaczynski-Imagn ImagesAJ HaefeleTue, November 25, 2025 at 4:33 PM UTC·19 min readI wanted to write about the Colorado Avalanche at the quarter mark of the season, but technically that is in the middle of the 21st game, so waiting until after the 22nd game made the most sense given this weekend’s back-to-back. Anyway, here we are after 22 games of the Avalanche season.
They currently sit 1st in the NHL in the standings with a record of 16-1-5. They sport a home record of 8-0-2 and an away record of 8-1-3. Their league-leading goal differential is +38, 25 goals better than second-place Carolina. Their goals scored (88, 4.00 per game) and goals allowed (50, 2.16 per game) are first in the NHL, both in raw numbers and on a rate basis.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementThe Avs have the league’s highest-scoring forward (Nathan MacKinnon) and highest-scoring defenseman (Cale Makar) and their starting goaltender for much of this season, Scott Wedgewood, is leading the league in wins and performed well enough to put himself into the conversation for Team Canada at the Olympics this spring. Everything has come up Colorado so far, but that’s not entirely what this is about.
Mostly, this is about digging into some of Colorado’s fancy stats, but also revisiting some of the storylines that dominated a lot of our preseason coverage. Let’s get to those.
JUMP TO:How good are the Avalanche compared to the ’22 Stanley Cup team?Is Brock Nelson the answer at 2C?How effective is Gabe Landeskog after missing three years?How will the defense work with all of the righties?Is Jack Drury a viable answer at 3C?
How good are the Avalanche compared to the ’22 Stanley Cup team?
This is easily the most complete team at this portion of the season since the Stanley Cup-winning team from 2021-22, so I wanted to go back and compare what this year’s team has looked like alongside that ’22 team through, well, 22 games. I didn’t intend for all of the 22s in this, but as Bob Ross said, it was a happy accident.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAnyway, I want to look at the underlying numbers of the teams more than the individual contributions one-to-one because lineups are so fluid that it’s hard to get a real gauge on it. I want to start by looking at some of the fancy stats just for this year’s team, then compare side-by-side to the ’22 team.
11So…pretty good except for the power play, which we all know has been bad this year. Let’s see how these clubs stack up against each other at 5v5.
2021-22
2025-26
Record
13-7-2
16-1-5
Goals
51-50
61-33
Shot attempt %
52.24
55.47
Shots on goal %
51.18
56.73
Scoring chance %
53.85
58.65
High-danger chance %
53.08
59.92
Expected goals %
51.74
58.10
The ’22 team was in the top 10 of most of those categories, but after a 4-5-1 start, they were clearly still finding their stride. This year’s team began 5-1-4, which wasn’t amazing, but a four-game losing streak (three in overtime) tempered expectations a bit. Since that fourth loss, an overtime loss in New Jersey, the Avalanche have gone 11-0-1 and taken a firm grip on the league lead in points.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementColorado has 37 points through 22 games, a blistering 138-point pace that would serve as one of the league’s greatest regular seasons in history should they maintain it. I’ll say that it’s unlikely to go that way, what with hockey being such a game of randomness and the unpredictability of injuries, as well as an Olympic break that is going to hurt the Avalanche more than most teams, but that’s where they sit with 26% of their regular season completed.
Now, the ’22 team started and finished the season with 4-5-1 stretches, but they went a ridiculous 48-9-5 and had a 17-0-2 stretch in January and February that put the Avs on the map as the team to beat out West.
They also had an incredibly productive trade deadline, but that’s a story for another day.
There’s some important context to consider here: The Avs have a 1.031 PDO, which is the highest in the league and is extremely unlikely to be sustained across a full season, but their having the sixth-highest shooting percentage as a team and fifth-highest save percentage as a team at 5v5 means there’s a little wiggle room there.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementThere’s a slump coming eventually (the seven games in 12 days stretch in early December is a fair bet), but there’s no getting around that this Avalanche team has gotten off to the kind of start that could see them chase down the ’22 and ’01 teams, which were the two best regular-season teams in franchise history. Not coincidentally, those teams won the Stanley Cup.
Is Brock Nelson the answer at 2C?
The trail of failures at the second-line center job behind Nathan MacKinnon is a long and winding road. The only great season the Avs got from that position was in the ’22 Cup run when Nazem Kadri produced like a first-line center in both the regular season and playoffs. Since then, we’ve seen J.T. Compher, Alex Newhook, Ryan Johansen, and Casey Mittelstadt all fail to lock that job down.
Compher’s 2022-23 season was the best effort to date as he posted a 17-goal, 52-point season that somehow has stood up as the best anyone has done since Kadri’s departure to Calgary. The Avs have poured resource after resource into trying to find a solution behind MacKinnon and the most recent big swing was when the Avalanche traded top prospect Cal Ritchie and a 2026 1st-round pick to the New York Islanders at last year’s trade deadline in exchange for Brock Nelson, a goal-scoring big man who brought a different dynamic to the position.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementNelson started off slowly as an Av but finished with 13 points in 19 games, the kind of 82-game pace that inspired some confidence he could be the man for the job. He then proceeded to go without a single goal in the Round 1 loss to the Dallas Stars, prompting questions about whether or not Nelson’s days as an impact player were over.
It was a semi-shocking development when the Avs announced they had re-signed Nelson to a three-year deal, bringing the 6’4″ center back to town. At age 34, Nelson has seen his playing time hit serious spikes early in the year but has since calmed down a bit. He’s scored 12 points (6G, 6A) in 22 games, a 44-point pace that is nothing short of disappointing.
That said, you dig a little deeper and you start to feel like things are coming around for him. He had just two points in his first nine games (18-point pace) and managed just 14 shots on goal. Since then, Nelson has recorded 10 points in 13 games (63-point pace) while putting 22 shots at the net. His shooting rate still isn’t quite there, but you’re seeing him come around in how he’s generating offense.
To that point, let’s look at a fancy chart to see how he’s doing.
playerIsolate nelsobr91 2526As a reminder, the numbers in the top row (offense) are good when they are positive, and the bottom row (defense) is good when negative. Nelson isn’t dominating on either side of the puck, but he’s better than average on both sides and is taking on a heavy defensive role.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementWhile his overall faceoff percentage is nothing special at 49.8%, where he’s winning those faceoffs is interesting to me.
Zones from left to right: Defense, neutral, offenseIt’s interesting that Nelson is getting a heavier defensive workload and succeeding there on faceoffs but is getting smoked in the offensive zone. That’s the reverse of what I would expect.
That we’re talking about things like faceoffs, however, is an indication that Nelson hasn’t definitively answered the question of this section with a resounding “yes”. It’s about production. If you’re the second-line center of the highest-scoring team in the league, you need to be producing. It’s that simple. While that has begun to happen, it needs to keep up.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementThere are plenty of encouraging underlying numbers from Nelson this year. Those need to hold steady and the production needs to continue at its recent level. I don’t even really care that three of his points are from empty nets. Just keep scoring.
How effective is Gabe Landeskog after missing three years?
This was a huge question coming into the season. We saw a strong version of Landeskog in the postseason, but he played five games for the Avs and then it was over. What would it look like across a regular slate of games?
The answer so far has been…some ups and downs. Like Nelson, there are salary-based considerations because when you’re making $7M as Landeskog is, you need to produce. When you’ve missed three full seasons and are the emotional heartbeat of the team, however, there’s some runway here.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementIf we’re being honest about this, Colorado’s exceptional start in winning games has provided plenty of cover for Landeskog not looking like a high-impact player anymore. The last we saw him in a regular season, he was putting up the most productive season of his career on a per-game basis (59 points in 51 games) and that’s with the knee injury that was going to cost him three seasons.
Now, we’re talking about a guy who was clearly shaking off some rust to start the season as he had just two points (both assists) in the first ten games. Yes, he has somehow had three goals disallowed because of challenges (two offside, one goaltender interference), but he’s scored just seven points in 22 games. His skating has slowed, though it was never a considerable strength, and his play with the puck has looked downright bad at times.
He’s also taken too many penalties with seven minors, but he did have a pretty fun fight in there, too, so pros and cons. He doesn’t have a multi-point game yet and is averaging just 14:23 of ice time, which is by far the lowest of his career. So this feels like a lot of bad, but some underlying numbers tell a different story.
playerIsolate landega92 2526These are absolutely bonkers numbers and suggest that he’s still an extremely effective two-way player; he’s just not quite the same guy he used to be when it comes to the box score stats. He’s no longer a 30-goal threat and he shouldn’t be stapled alongside Nathan MacKinnon like he was during the days of the Three-Headed Monster, but he’s playing his role ably and has brought all of the intangibles you want to see.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementIf he can get on the board a bit more and slow down his penalty-taking rate (both fair expectations), Landeskog could still prove to be a valuable top-six forward. Right now, he’s a perfect glue guy in the middle six, but he’s enormously effective in the defensive zone and helps provide some of that “hard to play against” edge the Avs have sorely lacked.
There are real pros and cons to this profile right now, but I’m not about to bury a guy who is the first player ever to come back from the surgery he did to play in the NHL again. Absolutely not.
How will the defense work with all of the righties?
Cale Makar might be on cruise control to his second consecutive Norris Trophy (third overall), so at the top of the right side of the defense, things are as expected. He’s elite and that’s been a lot of fun to watch. Can he hit 100 points? Can he repeat 30 goals? Can he crash the Hart Trophy conversation? We’ll see on all of that, but it’s safe to say that Makar is holding up his end of the deal.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementThe rest of this was a lot more uncertain. With Brent Burns added to a right side that was returning Josh Manson and Sam Malinski, there was a lot of conversation about what exactly was going to be the play here. Was one of the wily veterans going to move to the left or would the youngster Malinski swap to his off-side and try taking on the challenge of playing the left?
To start, that’s what happened. The Avs ran Sam Girard with Burns and put Malinski on the left side with Manson. Girard’s injury just two games into the season threw all of the plans into the trash as the team decided to move Manson to the left with Burns and put preseason waiver claim Ilya Solovyov on Malinski’s left side. How did it go?
Burns and Manson in 230:13 5v5 minutes together:
Shot attempts: 54.19%
Shots on goal: 55.35%
Goals: 10-10
Expected goals: 56.30%
Scoring chances: 51.83%
High-danger chances: 54.17%
Those are pretty steady numbers for that pairing. I’ll get to more on them in a minute. For Malinski, the conversation is a bit tougher. He played for a bit with Solovyov and the two had some amazing games together and then some real stinkers. The team moved off Solovyov and gave Jack Ahcan some time and he and Malinski moved pucks at an extremely high rate and clocked an expected goals % of 68.52, which is absurd.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementGirard has been slow to return to form since getting back into the lineup, but the results are also strong there with a 56.27 expected goals % as a pairing. To me, the real key has been Malinski himself. He’s moved around the defense but already has 10 5v5 points in 22 games (he had 13 in 76 games last year) and has 11 points on the year for a 40-point pace despite averaging only 15:08 of ice time and playing very little on either special teams unit.
Among defensemen with at least 200 minutes played, Malinski is seventh in the NHL in points per 60. He’s been an extremely efficient point producer and is currently tenth in the league in 5v5 scoring among defenders, one ahead of top-pairing players Filip Hronek and Rasmus Dahlin.
It hasn’t just been the offense, though, as his defense has held up, too.
playerIsolate malinsa98 2526I’m not arguing that Malinski should be given more ice time because I don’t think that’s the case, but he’s doing very well in the role he’s been put in. I’m curious to see how Girard and Malinski fare should they continue to be partnered together, but Malinski is certainly off to an intriguing enough start that the Avs can either consider signing him to a new contract or featuring him as a centerpiece in a trade for a true lefty.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementWhich brings us back to Manson.
Now, Manson on the left side was not something there was enthusiasm for going into the year, with Avs head coach Jared Bednar saying as much when talking about trying Malinski on the left side. Once Girard went down, however, the Avs tried it out and…the results have been kind of shocking, frankly.
You saw the numbers with Burns above. They’re pretty solid, but look at Manson’s individual contributions here.
00Putting Manson on the left side turned him into one of the league’s fiercest defenders in his own zone, apparently. For context, Jaccob Slavin, one of the league’s best defensive defensemen, sits in the -15% range on the defensive side. That’s the kind of company that Manson is keeping right now, though certainly not against the same caliber of competition.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementIt’s just been an extremely impressive performance from him. His physicality has been paired with his usual penalty-taking problems, but that’s the Josh Manson Experience. He’s a vital element to this defense and seeing him perform at this level has helped transform this defense into a much harder unit to play against.
On the other side of his pairing, Burns has been as advertised: an aggressive puck-moving defenseman whose play in his own zone is occasionally lacking but who excels at limiting high-danger chances. He’s put up 11 points of his own, giving the right side of the Avalanche defense three players pacing for 40-point seasons (in Makar’s case, way more). That’s a balanced attack even before you consider how solid they’ve been defensively.
I’m not sure what comes of all of this, but so far, this has been a wacky experiment that has produced quality results for the Avalanche.
Can Jack Drury handle the 3C job?
So, basically the same question as Brock Nelson, but the 3C job instead of the 2C job. That was the kind of uncertainty the Avs walked into this season with. On paper, you could see a path for success, but there were enough question marks that we weren’t necessarily confident in everything happening the right way.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementWith Nelson, the question was mostly about his aging curve and his fit in Denver after an up-and-down showing last year. With Drury, he was trying to prove he could handle a spot higher up in the lineup. His line with Parker Kelly and Logan O’Connor was awesome once they got put together last season and they were one of the bright spots from their seven-game loss to the Stars.
Entering this year, Drury was moving up after the summer trade of Charlie Coyle to Columbus.
Through 22 games, Drury has nine points (4G, 5A). That matches the number of points he had in both Carolina and Colorado last year, but in 39 GP and 33 GP, respectively. That 33-point pace would easily outpace his career high of 27 points, set in 2023-24 when he was 23 years old. Overall, you have to like what you’ve seen from Drury.
In 272:10 of 5v5 time, the Avs have a 59.90 expected goal % with Drury on the ice, which is a fantastic number. The Avs are outscoring teams, 12-10, in that state so it’s fair to say that Colorado is comfortably, and regularly, winning his minutes. He has centered some very good iterations of the third line with Victor Olofsson, Ross Colton, and Landeskog as his primary linemates.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementThe third line has become a legitimate weapon because Drury’s hockey IQ has helped him be the line’s ultimate connector, a playmaker who reads the ice well and helps his guys finish. Individually, we can see what he’s done in terms of the fancy stats.
playerIsolate druryja00 2526That isn’t exactly the type of card that I’ll sit back and take a long drag from a cig while saying, “That’s the good stuff,” but it isn’t a disaster, either. It’s just…solid. He’s a little overrated as a penalty killer, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he gets a little better on that unit when O’Connor, one of the very best PK wings in the NHL, returns to the lineup.
One area of concern for me is that Drury isn’t winning faceoffs the way you’d want him to as his overall win rate is at 51.9%, but when you dig deeper, you see some concerning trends emerge.
By zone, from left to right: Defense, neutral, offenseIf you’re trying to win the faceoff to start 3v3 overtime, Drury is your guy. If you’re trying to win an offensive zone faceoff, Drury is frustratingly ineffective there. All areas of the right side of the ice are a real struggle for Drury. Out of curiosity, I wanted to pull his games as an Av last year to see how he did on faceoffs after the trade that landed him in Denver. Here were those results:
Screenshot 2025 11 24 at 18 16 14 Instat HockeyHe’s clearly weaker on the right side, but he shouldn’t be struggling this much. Is it a case of him taking on tougher opposition, therefore better centers and struggling to handle the jump in competition? Or is he just having a weak start to the season? I don’t have an answer here, but I do think it’s something to keep an eye on as the season goes on.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementIf Drury reverts to previous form and goes back to being an ace faceoff guy, then there’s nothing to worry about. If he continues to be situationally poor, maybe the Avalanche front office looks into acquiring a fourth-line center who can handle those faceoffs and help take some of the burden from Drury’s shoulders. Anyway, this is an extremely niche thing to watch, but that’s what makes me who I am, I suppose.
Overall, I feel Drury has responded well to the increased responsibility as long as there’s been a play-driving wing (see: Colton, Landeskog) alongside him. Without those guys, he and Olofsson are miscast trying to do too much offensively. The fit between those two has been surprisingly solid with Drury the playmaker and Olofsson the scorer, but they need a strong play-driving presence as the third player to make it work.
On that front, Drury isn’t that player, but the Avs have the horses to give him the help he needs, so there shouldn’t be a real problem here. For my money, Drury’s growth is for real and I can already feel him living up to his family legacy and scoring a big goal in the postseason next spring. It’s his destiny.
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