The Colorado Avalanche are doing it again. A couple of seasons ago, after finishing last place in the Western Conference, the Avalanche drafted a young rookie stud, made some roster changes and a new goalie came to town.
With everybody second-guessing them, the Avalanche stormed out of the gate at the start of the season and won 10 of their first 13 games.
Fast forward a couple more season and we once again find the Avalanche starting the season after having a very disappointing finish to the previous season.
Once again, we see some big changes in the roster, the drafting of a young rookie stud and a new goalie coming to town.
So it shouldn't surprise us that we've also seen another hot start out of the gate after everybody has second-guessed this team.
With the win from the Avalanche tonight in Toronto, it marks the first time in franchise history that any Colorado Avalanche team has gone 5-0-0 on any road trip.
Think about the teams that have come before in Avalanche history and have never managed to do this.
Teams with the likes of Joe Sakic, Patrick Roy, Peter Forsberg, Rob Blake and others have never managed to string together five wins in a row on the same road trip.
That should speak volumes about the team that Colorado has assembled this year.
The Avalanche beat five very different teams on this road trip. They beat the Boston Bruins, who are defending Stanley Cup Champions that seemed to be suffering a little bit of a Stanley Cup hangover, with hard work and great goaltending.
They beat an Ottawa Blue Jackets team that really wanted their first win after playing a really sub-par game, but still managing to fight their way back into it. They beat the struggling Ottawa team and took out the frustrations of last season on former goalie by tallying seven goals.
They then went into both Montreal and Toronto to beat very solid teams in very different ways.
So what does this say about the future of the Avalanche? To me, it says that this team is not only much improved from a season ago, but that this is a team that the rest of the NHL really needs to pay attention to as they move forward.
They have found ways to win in tight-scoring games with decent defense and great goaltending. They found ways to win in a high-scoring shootout, too. They can blow a team out or win with only one goal.
We're only six games into the season and the Avalanche have already shown that they are able to win each type of game that can really be played in the NHL.
The only thing that the Avalanche haven't done yet is overcome a huge deficit, but the year is young.
I will not go as far as to say that this team is going to be a lock for the playoffs yet, because things are very early and the season's success will definitely be determined in the second half, as I wrote earlier.
Still, this Avalanche team has a ton of confidence in everything that they are doing right now and they absolutely should.
Currently, the Avalanche sit atop the Western Conference all by themselves and go back to Denver to await a very talented Chicago Blackhawks team as Colorado looks to get its first home win of the season.
The next thing for the Avalanche will be to see how they respond when this hot winning streak is snapped. Hopefully, for the Avalanche, that won't happen too soon.
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