Consistency kills. Depending on which side of that exchange you’re on it can be the difference between a rock-solid NHL team that doesn’t rattle easy… or a fragile team that lacks the ability to show-up completely every night. The All Scott Game came with the Avs winning 5 of there last 6 but if you stretch that out to the previous 10 games we were 6 of 10. That’s just above .500 and better than a losing record. But after the All Scott Game the Avs are 2 for 7. True we got a couple of points in there from OT but the point (other kind of point) isn’t how well we comeback. It’s that we have to come back at all. We spend more time playing the “Cardiac Kids” role than we do playing the “Rock Solid” role of a team that is hard to play against.
We have the instincts to survive, but we need to have the discipline and swagger to thrive.
It all starts in net, but lately it ends there too. We have a good core of goalies but we can’t rely on them every single night. We have to give them a couple of goals to work with sometimes and and as “not awesome” as it sounds, we need to learn how to play some shut-down defense.
Look at the Super Bowl game. No body is pretending that the Broncos offense is as good as it was two years ago. But, our defense is the best in the league and not only does it keep points off the board, it creates opportunities for the offense by not making us always play comeback hockey. If our players know they can take a chance here and there or slow things down and set-up a play then we don’t have players pounding on the boards after a missed chance because they were squeezing their stick to hard. Confidence comes from consistency and consistency is currency in the NHL that is not easily acquired. When Patrick Roy became the coach of the Colorado Avalanche he had his work cut out for him. His sheer enthusiasm and presence was enough to inspire the Avs to play an amazing season in his first year but alas, we are humans the Hedonic Treadmill is a real thing. Players became complacent, we stopped getting the bounces and some of our players are sadly getting older. It happens. It is our situation and we have to play the game with the cards we have. Every now and then we draw a card from the pile and see if we can play it, if we need to discard it or… or if we can better our hand with it. A 2 card isn’t always a great card, but with 3 of a kind… you can win a lot of games. Chemistry, compete level and confidence are the 3 C’s that are going to make or break this season for the Avs.
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