The Colorado Avalanche will win the Stanley Cup in the 2021 NHL season. The Avs, who finished the 2019-20 season in second place in the Western Conference and lost to the Dallas Stars in the second round of the Stanley Cup championships, have spent this off-season adding even more weapons to their young team, specifically by bulking up their defense. Both before and after the 2020 NHL Draft, the Avs have been favored by many odds makers in Vegas. Most people have them either tied for the best odds to win, or within the top three favorites.
In the draft, the Avs picked up five new players using the popular “best player available” approach. Their first round pick, defenseman Justin Barron, could be considered a steal at pick 26. He is aggressive and has a good two-way game, and was projected to go in the top 15 before he got sidelined with a blood clot. The Avs had a need at defenseman, as their defense struggled a bit towards the end of last season compared to their high-powered offense.
Barron himself is only 18 years-old, joining an already young team, with a below-average age of 26. Their core players, center Nathan MacKinnon, right wing Mikko Rantanen, and left wing Gabriel Landeskog, are especially young, ensuring that the Avs will remain a strong team in the years to come.
The Avs high powered offense allowed them to score 92 points in the season, far above the league average of 78. They often controlled the puck during games, and ended the season in third place in the league in Corsi For Percentage with 56.01 percent, which is a widely used predictive statistic in hockey. Corsi is essentially hockey’s version of a plus/minus, and when a team has above a 50 percent Corsi For Percentage, they were controlling the puck more often than not during games.


This percentage is measured by taking the teams’ total Corsi For score divided by their Corsi For score plus their Corsi Against score, in order to measure dominance and puck possession during games. This is good for predictions because the longer a team possesses the puck, the more chances they have to score, and thus win. It also is good for predictive future results because it takes into account all shot attempts, so it’s a more balanced number than just measuring a teams total goals on the season.
The Avs also got fourth in the league in PDO with 1.020, which measures a teams successful shooting and save percentages. A PDO score above a 1 means that a teams shooting (and scoring) percentage combined with their goalies save percentage equals over 100 percent, meaning they like will continue that trend in a regression upwards.
Colorado was the only team in the NHL to be in the top five of both of these predictive advanced statistics, making them statistically poised for a big year in 2021. In addition, the Avs were among only two other teams in the Central Division of the Western Conference to appear in the top five of either of these statistics.
The Avs finished the 2019-20 season with the top-scoring offense in the entire conference, but expect them to have en even stronger offensive run in 2021. In October, the team acquired right wing Brandon Saad and defenseman Dennis Gilbert from Chicago in exchange for defensemen Nikita Zadorov and Anton Lindholm. Adding Saad, a former 20-goal scorer, makes the Colorado offense even more dangerous, especially paired with MacKinnon and Landeskog.


Despite their struggles on defense, losing Zadorov and Lindholm is not big deal for the team, as they managed to retain the rest of their defense, in addition to drafting Barron. Colorado also acquired left-handed defender Devon Toews from the Islanders in early October, and signed him to a four-year contract.
The Avs had a good 2019-20 season, which left them in peak position to start the 2021 season. General manager Joe Sakic was able to maneuver around the changes with the NHL salary cap and add even more power and depth to an already powerful team, making the Avs real contenders. Their power on offense combined with a new found defensive strength will mean that the Stanley Cup will find a new home in Denver next year.