Before Thursday night’s game against the Winnipeg Jets, the Colorado Avalanche were seeing an upward trend. The Avs were scoring more on the power play. Fans thought they would never utter these words this season. But in the last 10 games (March 6–24), the Avs are converting at 30.3 percent. They now perform this twice their prior rate, ranking the Avs eighth in the league for this ten-game stretch. The Avalanche are getting better on the power play and here is why.

What changed?

In February, I had mentioned what it would take to fix the faltering power play. A solid right-sided forward is what they needed. With Kadri’s contribution, Colorado’s first unit sees a full restructure. It allows Martin Necas to move over to the left side of the rink and Nathan MacKinnon to slide down in the zone. This took pressure off MacKinnon to do all the scoring and allows Necas to be a natural setup man for Cale Makar. The entire unit is a threat, not just MacKinnon and Necas.

The difference in standings

Since Kadri joined the team and acted as a setup man, the Avs have scored 10 power-play goals in the last 10 games. The entire season they have only scored 38 in total. At the lowest point, the Avs were sitting 31st in the NHL, converting only 15.1 percent of their chances. As of Thursday, they have jumped to 27th and are converting 16.7 of their total chances the entire season.

What was the major worry?

The major worry was that the Avs have a huge amount of talent and couldn’t score. They needed something to boost the numbers up, and Kadri is the key to that. I will be the first to admit that I was wrong about bringing Kadri back. But if he is the spark the Avs needed on the power play, then I am all for it. Not only is the power play better with Kadri’s return to Denver, but the attitude of the Avs has improved as well.

Stats provided by MoneyPuck