Eurolanche

A positive look upon the Avs future

In early April it was easy to throw bad comments on our lovely Avs in general and on coach Joe Sacco in particular but with the postseason results at hand I must say that the finish of the season wasn’t so bad as it seemed. Ok, I admit that the games ahead the Blue Jackets were disastrous but we also met Phoenix Coyotes and LA Kings. 

Those are teams which the Avs fought against for the final playoff spots in the final weeks of the regular season. Those are teams that now have reached the Conference Finals! 

LA Kings have done the most astonishing playoff so far. They have only lost one game out of nine against the two best teams of the western conference, Vancouver and St Louis. Phoenix has knocked both Chicago and Nashville out. Teams which both were better than themselves.

I can’t help to look at the future with a smile on my face. Avs had the youngest roster in the whole league last season and they did great during the last months of the regular season.

But we can’t sit tight and wait for the youngsters to bloom by themselves and hope the team will climb up the standings by small steps. What the organization now needs to do is to open up their wallet and get some experienced guys to the team who can help the young ones to boost their confidence. It’s really tough for guys like Gabriel Landeskog, Matt Duchene and Ryan O’Reilly to have the pressure on their shoulders by their age.

Why did Milan Hejduk, Alex Tanguay and Chris Drury become what they did? They had Joe Sakic, Peter Forsberg and Adam Foote among others that stood up in the down periods which made it easier for them to survive when the results went bad.

The Avs of today needs that kind of players today as well. Players that has the ability to make the crucial points when the team plays bad. If we can get two or three top players – I´d like Claude Giroux or Dustin Brown and a top offensive defenseman – then we can get the top in the near future. If we don’t, I can just hope that our young heroes continue their progress and becomes that solid platform that every team needs.