Avalanche Midseason Point Totals

The Avs just hit the 41 game mark yesterday, which means the season is officially half over. There's no doubt that the team is playing great hockey, but just how good of a first half did they have? Is the success sustainable, and what does it tell us about where they might finish at the end of the year?

To find out, I decided to compare them to previous Avs teams. However, since the NHL has used a few different scoring systems over the years, I had to normalize the stats a bit. I decided to take it back to the 1996 method, so a regulation/OT win (ROW) counts as 2 points, a tie or shootout attempt (win or lose) counts as 1 point, and a loss - even in overtime - counts as 0 pts. If these numbers appear off, that would be why.

(click on column title to sort)

Here's what I found:

• This is the 4th best regular season team in Avalanche history after 41 games. That may change as we move through the 2nd half of the year, but we're in some very elite company at the moment.
• No Avs team that had more than 40 points at the midway mark has missed the playoffs. This current team has 53, so our chances are looking pretty good.
• Click on the ROW column. The only other teams to have 24 or more regular/OT wins through the first half of the season were the '01 and '97 squads. They both won the President's Trophy. That's not to say this team will, but it's an incredibly impressive number that this roster should be proud of and try to maintain.
• Judging by the teams around us at the midpoint, I'd say we'll finish at around 95-105 pts in this system, which will likely translate to 100-110 pts in the current NHL system because of the loser point.
• Unlike the '10-'11 team that got off to a supposed great start, the '13-'14 team is cleanly winning more games and forcing more of what we don't win into the shootout. From this chart, our success looks hard earned and fairly sustainable long term.
• The argument could be made that our high PDO and mid-range Corsi indicates that we're not as good as we look, but given the strength of our current numbers and the historical trends, I doubt that any regression will be strong enough to derail the season. We've already built ourselves a pretty nice cushion, so we should be fine even if we stumble a bit.
• Varlamov and Giguere have been excellent, and 41 games is not a small sample size. The Allaire hire is really paying off, and it shows in these numbers. Our questionable defense hasn't really hurt us yet, but if we shore it up, we're even less likely to regress.
• Keep in mind we still have games in hand compared to the rest of the league, and we also have 19 games left against the Eastern Conference. Only Dallas has more at 20.

I'm sure I'll think of a few more insights as the day goes on, but what stands out to you about these numbers?

UPDATE:

Upon reflection, I decided to add the full Sakic era into the chart, which includes 7 seasons of the Nordiques. These stats were normalized to reflect an 82 game season.