The Three NHL Teams Poised to Climb the Standings

Colorado Avalanche

The Colorado Avalanche won the President’s Trophy last season. It was a shortened year, but they put up 82 points in the standings in 56 games to lead the way in the NHL. Things haven’t started quite so well this season.

The Avalanche headed into Wednesday night’s game with the Vancouver Canucks with a 6-5-1 record. It isn’t terrible, but it is far off the pace they set last season. The team did lose a couple of scoring forwards in Brandon Saad and Joonas Donskoi, but the core is still in place and they should be on top of the standings again.

However, they currently sit 6th in the Central Division standings, only ahead of the Chicago Blackhawks and Arizona Coyotes who are two of the worst teams in the league this season.

The Avalanche have been forced to deal with a number of key injuries already this season. Nathan MacKinnon, Mikko Rantanen and Gabriel Landeskog form one of the best lines in the league but all three have missed games. Devon Toews has only played three contests so far and Cale Makar was out for a couple of games as well.

Once they get healthy, they will get rolling. All signs are pointing to them playing better than their record anyway. According to natrualstattrick.com, the Avs rank 4th in the NHL in scoring chance percentage at five on five and are 5th in expected goals for percentage but sit at 18th in actual goals scored percentage.

That just tells you the pucks aren’t going in right now but they soon will and the Avalanche will storm their way up the standings.