Avs fans are all just over the moon at the moment, because even they didn’t expect this to happen.
We expected Stazzer and the Duke to come up big for us, but never expected much depth.
There have been a lot of very pleasant surprises over our first stretch.

Our D has really tightened up and the ‘quality of shots against’ has gone down considerably. Players who were calling it in last year (Hannan, Clark, Salei (although not applicable to this argument yet)) have really picked up their game.
Also players who we never expected to perform (Quincey, Cumiskey, Wilson) have come out great for us.
Cumiskey’s playing is, in my humble opinion, completely thanks to Sacco and his system though. Sacco has faith in the kid and he lets him use those wheels.

The goaltending Anderson has just been unbelievable. If one would just watch the NHL recaps, they’d see how an unorthodox style should work (I’m looking at you Theo, even though you’re doing quite well with the caps as of now).

And the last great thing is: If we exclude IR we have 9M in cap left!

Svatos has been disappointing so far and should be offloaded if he doesn’t see some 2nd line playing time. He’s just useless if his linemates aren’t great passers.

1) Agreed that its way to early to make proclamations based upon 10 games, but have to be impressed with the Av’s and Anderson specifically, nonetheless.
2) Eventually though you’d have to think that ‘the water will find its level’ and the ‘lanche will come back down to where most thought they’d be. In the mean time its a nice story

We’re all confident that the clock will strike midnight at some point. Last night on the radio in Nashville, Ray Ferraro made the observation that in practical terms, the duo of Ryan O’Reilly and Matt Duchene are going to hit a wall as the long grind of the NHL season sets in.

Denver fans should enjoy the ride, though. There’s no doubt that picking up Anderson was a real coup, and the future for the Avs looks much brighter than it did a few months ago.

It’s still far too early to tell where the Avs will end up, but I thought the Anderson signing was brilliant the day it happened, and that it would keep them out of the cellar.

If the Avs have one of those “everything goes right” seasons (i.e., no significant injuries), they should challenge for a playoff spot. If something bad happens (e.g., a replay of their injury situation last year, or Anderson goes down) they’ll likely plummet quickly. In the most likely scenario, somewhere between those two extremes, I would speculate they’ll finish around 10th in the conference.

As others have said, enjoy the ride. I’ve seen a couple Avs games this season, and I think the future is bright out there. With a little more depth and a few seasons of NHL experience on the part of the rookies, this will be an exciting team soon.

Us Avs fans have every reason to be elated. After how poorly last season went, we’re getting what we normally expect from the team and better. It’s like we got our same broken down car back from the shop with a few “performance modifications” from the repairman.

For example, the D is only slightly changed, but we’re getting awesome play out of John-Michael Liles, and especially Scott Hannan. Kyle Quincey fills a glaring hole in last season’s team. We’re getting a lot of value out of our offensive depth from good players in our system whose talent was overshadowed by how disastrous last season was.

There’s nothing that can be said of Craig Anderson that hasn’t already been said.

A lot of it has to do with Joe Sacco. He appears to have a knack for drawing potential out of players, as he’s gotten a level of play out of this team that we only talked about existing on paper. We knew Wolski was capable of being in the league-wide scoring race, and my god, after three seasons, he’s actually doing it. Sacco also doesn’t ever let the team give up when they’re down. See the Flames game last night.

Teams still seem to be coming into their games with the Avs thinking this is the night they cool off, and this is not a team to take lightly. There’s a level of heart that just wasn’t present last year, and it makes the difference. I hate to bring the intangibles in, but they have a knack for confounding statistics.

The level of play may come down, but why would it be a collapse? It’ll be a gradual decline if anything – those of us watching the team nightly are already seeing it in a couple players, but we’re using our depth and finding ways to win.

Trying to get more traffic to your site, I see. Well, can we all at least just agree to hate the Red Wings?

Flames in 01-02 had a ridiculous start as well. I can’t remember their record but they were amazing for the first bit of the season when Jarome was lighting up the league, but fell off significantly and missed the playoffs.

Yeah, the Avs can’t sustain this pace. Craig Anderson can’t play every game and he can’t play this well in every game. They’ll get over their fast start and eventually fall back. It’s tough to hear, especially when you watch a team every game and you see them winning, but it’ll happen.

Now the Kings, they’re going to keep winning all season…

I think the term is ‘regressing to the mean.’ It happens to everyone. It’s already started for the Rangers. The Avs, Sabres and Pens are next. In what order? Who knows.

Ta,

Everyone should head over the Behind The Net to read the latest posts by Gabe that cover those topics.