TAKEAWAYS: Colorado Avalanche Bullied On Broad Street, But I’m Still Not Worried (+)

PHILADELPHIA – First off, yes I have seen and covered Colorado Avalanche teams with as bad or worse an injury plague as the one gripping the current defending Stanley Cup champions. The 1999-2000 Avalanche went through a terrible time, with Peter Forsberg missing 33 games, Joe Sakic missing 22, Adam Foote missing 23 and a bunch of other good players missing a lot of time.

Anyone remember the 2008 playoffs, when all of a sudden the team lost, I believe, seven good players in about three days in the second round and got swept by Detroit partially because of it? I remember a game in Montreal in the 1998-99 season in which the Avs only had four defensemen, and had to play the Canadiens with that number in the rotation. I remember brand new pickup Greg de Vries was one of them.

The Avalanche, to this point, actually aren’t even among the top five teams with the most man-games lost to injury in the NHL. The total, after tonight, is 117. Toronto, as of Dec. 2, had 166. Washington and Philadelphia, on that date, had 162.

The 2010-11 Avalanche had 474 man-games lost to injury. The 2014-15 Avalanche set a new record, with 478.

So, this has happened before. But, yeah, this is bad.