Colorado Avalanche: Jared Bednar was snubbed of Jack Adams Award

Despite an outstanding season, Colorado Avalanche head coach Jared Bednar wasn’t a Jack Adams finalist.

Every season, the Jack Adams Award goes to the best coach in the NHL. The league recently released the list of the finalists for the 2019-20 season. Bruce Cassidy of the Boston Bruins, John Tortorella of the Columbus Blue Jackets, and Alain Vigneault of the Philadelphia Flyers were named. However, Colorado Avalanche head coach Jared Bednar was wrongfully excluded.

He should have been one of the three finalists. It’s hard to quantify what a coach brings to the table, but the Avalanche finished with the second-best record in the Western Conference and the third-best record in the entire league despite having various injury problems. Bednar took a strong, but flawed, roster and made them more than the sum of their collective parts.

The Case For Bednar

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The Avalanche finished in the top seven in both goals scored and goals allowed. The only other team to do that was the Boston Bruins.

Bednar didn’t have some of his best players for a good portion of this season. Only two of his players played in all 70 games. Just 11 of them played in at least 60 games. Erik Johnson, Andre Burakovsky, Cale Makar, Gabriel Landeskog, Nazem Kadri, Colin Wilson, Mikko Rantanen, and Philip Grubauer each missed substantial time.

Sure, Bednar has Nathan MacKinnon, who was recently named a Ted Lindsay Award finalist and should also be one of the three Hart Trophy finalists. However, he had 93 points this season. Their next highest-scoring forward (Burakovsky) had 45 points. Bednar did an incredible job this season helping the Avalanche overcome a number of hurdles that could have derailed their season.

At one point, they were without both Rantanen and Landeskog, who finished second and third respectively on the team in points per game, for a month (October 27 to November 29). During that stretch, they still finished with an above .500 record (7-6-1). How many teams could lose two of their three best players for an entire month and still be a respectable team?

Bednar was also dealing with a competitive Central Division featuring the reigning Stanley Cup champion St. Louis Blues and the Dallas Stars, who finished strong after a weak start. Also, every team in the Central Division made the Stanley Cup Playoffs. Even though it took expanding the postseason to 24 teams for that to happen, it shows how strong the Central Division was this season.

The Avalanche were also an impressive team as far as advanced stats are concerned. They were a top 10 team in 5v5 CorsiFor%, 5v5 FenwickFor%, 5v5 ShotsFor%, 5v5 GoalsFor%, 5v5 xGF% (expected goals for percentage), and 5v5 ScoringChancesFor% (all score and venue adjusted). This shows how truly dominant the Avalanche were despite rarely having the luxury of icing a healthy lineup.

Who Should Go?

Now, the question is, who should Bednar have been named over? This is a tough question, as this year’s Jack Adams Trophy class is very deep. There were no fewer than seven deserving candidates. However, I’d lean towards Bruce Cassidy.

Before Bruins fans get mad at me, let me explain. I think Cassidy is a heck of a coach. The Bruins were expected to be among the top teams in the Eastern Conference and Cassidy led them to the President’s Trophy. It can be hard to coach a great team and keep them focused for the entire season. Cassidy did precisely that and deserves credit for it. He also handled his goaltending situation flawlessly, managing two older goalies in Tuukka Rask and Jaroslav Halak.

However, the Bruins didn’t have to overcome the obstacles that the Avalanche did. As great of a job as Cassidy did, I think Bednar did a slightly better job. Tortorella was in the same boat as Bednar, as no team lost more games due to injuries than the Columbus Blue Jackets. Plus, Torts was dealing with the polar opposite of Cassidy’s Bruins – two young, inexperienced goalies.

Vigneault is a traditional candidate. He helped turn the Flyers around and helped them to finally look like the team they should have been looking like for years. Had the season wound up being 82 games, the Flyers probably would have wound up winning the Metropolitan Division.

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So with all due respect to Cassidy, who did a great job, Bednar did an even better job. Tortorella and Vigneault did as well. The Jack Adams voters got two of the three finalists right. However, Bednar was robbed, which shows voters need to keep exploring ways to properly evaluate coaching.

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