They're third this year in man-games lost to injury. They were seventh last year, fifth the year before.
In the Cup season, they were 12th.
So a huge chunk of that is, of course, Landeskog. They also started the season without Lehkonen for a good long while. I've no idea if Nichushkin counts or not (I'm guessing he doesn't, well he does NOW, but not during his suspension).
Again, part of their rut is actually acquiring injury-prone players. Drouin, de Haan, Manson, etc. Part of it is definitely plain, dumb luck. You can do a little about the former, but not much, especially given the cap situation. You most definitely can't do anything about the latter.
If there's an unexplored variable I suppose it may be how conservative their training and medical staffs are. Avs have had the same head trainer (Matt Sokolowski) forever. They've had some turnover on the medical side (thank you Nuke). I've no idea if they're rushing guys back who should be held out or not, I'm not here to really question them though. I trust they're doing what most teams do and try to make the best determinations they can on a player-by-player basis. But I'm not expecting a radical departure from this anytime soon.
