The improved Colorado Avalanche (Trending Topics)

Here’s how you know things got very, very bad between Patrick Roy and the Colorado Avalanche: News of his departure from the organization came out not from a team source, but by the now-former coach himself, via PR Newswire.

Some of the more noteworthy stuff in the brief statement included the fact that he had basically — despite his role as both coach and VP of Hockey Ops — been frozen out of the player evaluation process.

You read over at all the statements Roy has made over the past few years, and you get a pretty clear picture of a guy stuck hopelessly in the past, and only real ’90s kids remember when his kind of thinking was actually driving the game forward. Basically everyone in the league, with a handful of notable exceptions, had moved on from his vision for what makes a team successful. We know now that the “evolution” camp included his boss and long-time running buddy Joe Sakic. How roughly had Roy been pushed to the sidelines? Pierre LeBrun reported “philosophical differences” were what prompted his decision. Sportsnet’s John Shannon said the two Avs greats “weren’t even speaking” by the time free agency hit.

Which, now that we know it for sure, actually makes a lot of sense.

You look at the list of guys the Avs acquired this summer, and they certainly don’t line up with the kind of philosophy Roy has been spouting these last three years. Patrick Wiercioch is a very good, undervalued defenseman. Joe Colborne can play a little bit. Fedor Tyutin might constitute a decent depth reclamation project, and so on. It’s the adoption of a very clear “moneyball”-type examination of the free agent market. General Fanager shows their new acquisitions at the NHL level cost a combined $5.8 million or so. Not a bad number for four players, at least a few of whom are clearly useful in high- to medium-leverage situations.

There was also the deal that brought Tyson Barrie — a player Roy has called out repeatedly despite the fact that he’s arguably the best defender on the team — back into the fold after much speculation that he’d be on the outs. In the ideological shadow war the Avs were apparently waging internally, it’s nice to see a team somewhat ironically choose a talented player over a bad coach (not that Roy would know anything about that, wink wink).

For all their faults the last few years, and there have been many, the Avalanche at least have the bones and guts of a decent team, if not the outward appearance. Nathan MacKinnon, Matt Duchene, Gabe Landeskog, Carl Soderberg, and Mikhail Grigorenko is a solid group of five talented forwards, and Soderberg is the elder statesman by a mile at age 30. On the blue line, if you have Erik Johnson, Wiercioch, and Barrie, and you’re hoping Eric Gelinas and Nikita Zadorov turn into something, there are certainly worse positions in which to find oneself (and here too, the oldest player is just 28). In net, as Roy learned a while ago, Semyon Varlamov is going to win you plenty of games on his own.

But the biggest addition this team is going to make, almost guaranteed, is whichever coach they hire to replace Roy.

I’ve said it many times, but there were few coaches in the league worse than Roy. This was true not only because he was a demonstrably bad coach buoyed by one extremely improbable playoff berth, but also because he was steadfast in his refusal to accept responsibility for the team’s problems the last two seasons.

Whether he was instrumental in driving out Ryan O’Reilly or if that was more of an organizational beef after the whole offer sheet fiasco with Calgary is unclear. But Roy’s handling of the player is pretty indicative of his evaluation of O’Reilly’s talent. And now, what do you know: O’Reilly is really good for the Buffalo Sabres. The Avs are poorer for having lost him.

Then there was the actual on-ice performance the team turned in repeatedly, for 246 regular-season games. No matter how many times Roy complained about players without heart, or not getting saves at the right time, or whatever other BS excuses he could come up, the problem was never, ever the coaching acumen he brought to the table. And yet, if he at one time had as much of a say in personnel decisions as his statement Thursday implied, not only was he hurting the time behind the bench, but on the lineup card as well. For that reason, the continual blaming of players for his own shortcomings is actually self-incriminating. There aren’t too many Avs players who were on the team before he went behind the bench, and he’s spent much of his time after losses ripping guys like Jarome Iginla(?), Matt Duchene, and the core in general.

But if you’re a guy with a big say in putting together the roster — and okay, Duchene was one of the few inherited players — and you think the core sucks, well, whose fault is that?

I mean, we’ve been over this a thousand times by now, but just have a look at the numbers the Avs put out in Roy’s tenure:

This is indefensibly bad. All the inputs were in the bottom-third of the league at best, but the results themselves — in both goals and wins — were the result of a ton of luck. And it says a lot that the best-shooting and sixth-best goaltending team in the league over a three-year period finished 15th and 20th in goals for and against, respectively.

The goaltending thing I’m willing to chalk up to skill, to some extent. No one would argue that Semyon Varlamov and his battery mates are the sixth-best goalie group in the league, but they’re up there, and they got a little lucky.

As for the shooting quality, well, you can’t reasonably expect a team, even a team with good talent in general, to finish 23rd in scoring chances per 60 over a three-year period and keep having the puck go in more often than anyone else in the league. Again, it’s talent-supported to some extent, but not that far. Roy didn’t “unlock” the problem of sustaining a high shooting percentage, and even if he had, maybe he should tell the next coach through the door the secret, because he’s so deficient in other areas that lead to positive results that all the luck in the world only got him to middle-of-the-pack in terms of actual goals on the scoreboard.

So really, this is a net positive for the Avs. They lose a guy who is clearly among the worst coaches in the sport. Basically anyone they bring in from the professional coaching ranks is going to implement a system that actually works, at least to a greater extent than what the team produces under Roy. In the end, those philosophical differences between Roy and Sakic were, “I know what I’m doing,” versus “Nah.”

Better players coming in this summer, and a bottom-three coach going out? All of this puts the Avalanche in a significantly better position to succeed next season. Unless they hire Bob Hartley or something.

Ryan Lambert is a Puck Daddy columnist. His email is here and his Twitter is here.

All stats via Corsica unless otherwise stated.