The move has already been made but what can we learn from the past?
In the immediate aftermath of the Colorado Avalanche’s first round playoff exit in defeat by the Dallas Stars there was a change made to relieve assistant coach Ray Bennett of his duties. He fell on his sword for a power play that was at least part of the reason the season ended earlier than expected. The move might be an easy solution to the problem but fixing the man advantage, which has had its ups and downs during the entire eight years of Bennett’s tenure and consecutive Avalanche playoff appearances, is a complex process. It’s important to understand where this special teams unit failed them in the past as to not repeat the same problems in the future.
While the players seemed too deliberate at times looking for the perfect shot, that was by design as it was a power play intended to take advantage of Colorado’s elite shooters. If it wasn’t clicking the thinking was those shooters would begin to convert eventually and this held true in the regular season. In those eight years the power play settled into a regular season range of 19.1% to 24.8% with the highest mark actually achieved in the 2024-25 season.
What was missing in this year’s playoffs is the luxury of time and Mikko Rantanen, who statistically had been Colorado’s best power play sniper. In a short seven-game series there isn’t time for shooting percent regression to counteract a lull and there was never any significant secondary trick in the bag. Cale Makar is the league’s most talented and unique defenseman and yet he’s stuck running the umbrella like it’s the year 2000. Freeing him up to be a primary shooter, at least in a secondary set-up, is something the new power play boss needs to consider.
Of Colorado’s seven playoff defeats in the last eight years it could be argued the power play was at least a significant contributing factor in five eliminations. The most glaring is the 2/28 performance in the Seattle Kraken loss, which attention was focused elsewhere for obvious reasons, but there was never any pressure placed on the coaching staff to find new adjustments in case this issue kept arising. The best lesson moving forward is to understand the history of their struggles and to make strategies to avoid these pitfalls.
Year by Year playoff results:
2018: 2/20, 10%
Colorado’s first appearance in the playoffs against Nashville was in Bennett’s initial season with the organization. Everyone was thrilled to just make the dance and wasn’t too concerned with how the very inexperienced Avalanche went out but that 10% success rate should have been an early red flag.
2019: 7/48, 14.6%
The power play wasn’t much better the following year either with putrid results of 2/23, 8.7% in the second round against San Jose. Even if Gabe Landeskog was onside, the Avalanche were primed for disappointment in this postseason with those results.
2020: 15/68, 22.1%
Clearly the power play opportunities in the COVID-19 bubble went crazy after everyone had a couple months break. From an overall perspective, the 22.1% conversion rate was an improvement but the Avalanche slumped with a 4/32, 12.5% against Dallas in the second round series which eliminated them.
2021: 12/29, 41.4%
Finally a year where the man advantage was a dominant force and was not the reason the Avalanche disappointed in the second round against the Vegas Golden Knights with a 6/17, 35.3% success rate in that series.
2022: 20/61, 32.8%
Winning the Stanley Cup was achieved with a strong power play in this season including an incredible 6/16, 37.5% performance in the Cup finals against Tampa Bay.
2023: 2/28, 11.1%
These were appalling results against Seattle with the closest resemblance to the Stanley Cup winning team following their championship win. There were other distractions but this should have been a red flag of how a poor power play performance can undermine a strong regular season team poised for a long playoff run.
2024: 11/30, 36.7%
For once the power play kept up its end of the bargain even in defeat and the 5/14, 35.7% conversion rate against Dallas in the second round was not the reason this season ended too early.
2025: 3/22, 13.6%
We know there story here, the power play was not good enough in this Dallas series and it cost Bennett his job. Cale Makar’s shooting percent regression from 20% in the regular season could be part of the reason for sluggish results as well as a unit trying to find cohesion after the departure of Rantanen. But after five failures in the post season, enough was enough.