Can this group generate more goals?
Following a disappointing loss to the St. Louis Blues, the bulk of the conversation surrounding the Colorado Avalanche and their latest woes has centered around the lack of scoring. Head coach Jared Bednar is even acknowledging concerns after producing just two goals in a pair of weekend games.
Bednar admitted he’s concerned about the lack of offense from forwards not on his top line.
“All three of those lines, if you look through how many of those guys have gone 10-12 games with just a point or two, it’s the bulk of them,” he said.
— Evan Rawal (@evanrawal) February 24, 2025
Relying on a good handful of players who have no history of consistent production, particularly in goal scoring in their careers is faulty at best. It’s not about just bearing down to get the job done.
Ross Colton leads the rest of the forward group with a career high of 22 goals he scored in the 21-22 season has just three assists on the year after cooling down off of his scoring streak in the fall. Jonathan Drouin, who has missed a lot of the season due to injury netted 21 with the Tampa Bay Lightning in 16-17. Miles Wood currently has three points total with a career high of 32 points and 19 goals back in 2017-18. Logan O’Connor’s career high is 26 points and 13 goals while he currently has 14 points. Newly acquired Jack Drury has a career high of 27 points with eight goals. Going even further down the lineup is Parker Kelly with a career high 18 points and Joel Kiviranta with 11 points prior to this season.
Casey Mittelstadt is his own enigma, which was discussed in depth a couple months ago, but the production expectations with him need to be tempered. Casey scored a combined 18 goals split between Colorado and Buffalo last season but his previous career high was 15 goals in the 22-23 season in which he played all 82 games and Buffalo was third in the league in goals for.
Clearly, this bunch is not going to produce consistent secondary offense even with an assumed glow up playing with Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar, who often share the ice with each other. The other issue is those who are producing outside the duo of superstars are doing it at an elevated shooting percentage.
First up is Artturi Lehkonen who leads the Avalanche in goals with 23 and is shooting 22%, which is clearly above his career 11% mark. Similarly, Valeri Nichushkin when he has been on the ice is shooting 21% to arrive at his 11 goals over his normal 11%. Jonathan Drouin’s six goals has come from a 17% rate when his career average is just 9%. Joel Kiviranta is shooting 17% as well over his career 10% with his 11 goals. Even Casey Mittelstadt is shooting a tick above his career average as is Ross Colton and Martin Nečas. If anything this group is primed to regress down to the mean rather than find some extra scoring touch over the next couple of months.
Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar will have to continue to carry the team if they want to have continued success. MacKinnon is shooting a little under his career average of 10% and can quickly improve upon his 21 goals this season. Makar, though, is shooting over his 10% so they both might regress to balance each other out.
It may be time to take a bigger picture view of how this roster is constructed especially before deciding on how to approach the upcoming NHL trade deadline. Is it really a production drought when there’s a deficit in scoring talent and the ones with skill are already reaping the benefits of good fortune? With so many changes to this roster over the calendar year in particular has the team lost their identity and ability to create offense? Hopefully in the near future there’s more answers than questions.