The Colorado Avalanche were really bad last year. They had the worst record of any Western Conference team last year aside from Arizona (non-Canadian team division). They were probably going to be very bad again this year. Then something magical happened: Patrick Roy quit.
For the unintiated, Roy was one of, if not the, worst coaches in the NHL last year. He was vehemently against analytics and seemed to want to hold back the offensively gifted Avalanche and do anything but play the modern puck possession-focused game. A team with Gabriel Landeskog, Nathan MacKinnon and Matt Duchene along with Tyson Barrie on the backend should not be doing that.