Now, for the first time this season, the Avalanche is experiencing plenty of adversity and it could get worse.
A 4-1 home loss Saturday night to the Florida Panthers, whose only previous road win came in the Oct. 3 season opener in Dallas, was the Avalanche's third consecutive defeat, and the schedule only gets more difficult in the next two weeks.
"It's three in a row and people can start pushing the panic button, but we're not," Avalanche captain Gabriel Landeskog said. "We're still committed as a group."
Making matters worse, leading scorer Matt Duchene sustained an oblique muscle injury early in the third period and didn't return. Avalanche coach Patrick Roy didn't know how serious the problem is and said Duchene would be re-examined before the team's next practice, which is Monday.
The Avalanche has been outscored 13-5 during the losing streak and the defending Stanley Cup champion Chicago Blackhawks visit the Pepsi Center on Tuesday. The Avalanche will follow that with road games in Phoenix and Los Angeles, come home to play St. Louis and then meet Minnesota in back-to-back games.
"We have to stay positive, there's no doubt about it," Roy said. "But I hate to lose a game like this in front of our fans. They deserve better than this from our part. To me effort is not a problem. I don't like our focus. We made some poor decisions without the puck and in our positioning. I thought our defensive coverage was not as good as it should have been.
"We have to go back to basics and make sure that we are better with our sticks in our zone, and behind the net we got beat to the front. Hey, listen, it's good for me to see that. It's a nice learning process and it helps us to evaluate our players and know where some of our guys are."
Discipline has definitely been a problem even after Roy and the players continue to talk about the importance of staying out of the penalty box. Roy said Saturday morning that the team was taking too many penalties in the offensive zone, so what happened Saturday night? Landeskog and PA Parenteau took penalties in the Panthers end in the opening 10 1-2 minutes of the first period. The Avalanche killed off Landeskog's penalty, but the Panthers' Brad Boyes scored eight seconds after Parenteau exited the box.
"It was a tough call, but it is what it is," Parenteau said. "They scored just when I got out of the penalty box. It was a tough break, but we can’t take those penalties as a team. We talked about it. In the future, we’re going to try not to take them.…
The Panthers had five consecutive power plays after the Avalanche was held without a shot on goal on its only man advantage of the game, which started at 3:42 of the first period when Jonathan Huberdeau tripped Nathan MacKinnon.
Brian Campbell made it 2-0 at 1:15 of the second period after Avalanche defenseman Nate Guenin was assessed a double-minor for high-sticking Huberdeau near his mouth with 2:21 left in the first period. The Avalanche killed all but 24 seconds of the extended power play when Campbell drilled a point shot by goalie Semyon Varlamov.
Ryan O'Reilly got that one back at 7:23 to draw the Avalanche within 2-1, but the Panthers increased the lead to 3-1 at 13:53 when Tomas Kopecky skated in alone on Varlamov and beat him with a backhanded shot at 13:53, two seconds after Jan Hejda finished serving a slashing penalty.
Huberdeau closed out the Avalanche when he scored during a scramble in front at 12:16 of the third period.
"I don’t know if it’s on discipline, on penalties or whether they’re tough calls against us, but it doesn’t matter," Landeskog said. "We are still going to have to kill those penalties and we’re still going to show up to play. It’s unfortunate. It’s tough at home, especially when we want to be such a good home team and come out strong at home, but it is what it is.
"We have talked about little things here and there to get our game back to the next level, penalties one of them, D-zone coverage is one of them as well. We came back to 2-1 and we had all the momentum in the world there. But for us, we’re a positive group in here. You know, it (stinks), it’s tough. But we are good enough to turn this around.…
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Hejda has been a minus-2 in each of the past two games after posting an even or plus plus/minus rating in 16 of the first 17 games.
"It's going to be interesting how we're going to handle this, definitely," he said. "This game must be a wakeup call for us. Hopefully everybody understands that we have to get back to the basics and work hard and stick with our game. My feeling is we weren't ready for the start. That's why we took penalties at the start of the game. It doesn't matter who you are playing in this league, it's hard to chase from behind."
Panthers goalie Tim Thomas played well while stopping 32 shots for his 200th NHL win, but he left some rebounds that the Avalanche never got a stick on.
"First of all, their defensemen played a very good game," Hejda said. "They boxed out and didn't let us go in front of the net."
Parenteau said the Avalanche wasn't surprised by anything the Panthers did. Florida has gone 2-3-0 since Peter Horachek replaced Kevin Dineen as coach Nov. 8, with both wins coming in the past three games.
" We knew they were going to come out hard, new coach, new atmosphere on the other side," Parenteau said. "We were prepared for that. I don’t think we played that bad of a game. But when we have chances, we have to finish them and we have to be more hungry around the net for sure.…