I can’t think of anything more exciting than the run that the Aves had at the beginning of this season. After everybody assumed that they were going to finish dead last in the division, they came out with a great October.

However, their solid play hasn’t stopped, even though it has tapered off a little bit. Anderson isn’t putting up the stellar numbers he was at the beginning of the season, and the offense isn’t scoring as much as it was at the beginning of the season.

The Aves rely on depth to win games. They don’t have any superstar players that they rely on. They don’t have an Ovechkin, or a Crosby, or a Sedin on their team.

What they do have, is a tremendous amount of depth that really shined at the beginning of the season. The goal scoring was spread out, and there were a ton of assists.

I thought that was a little strange because they didn’t have players that could really score goals. Wolski has the most on the team with 15, and is 23rd in the NHL.

The reason that I don’t think they’re going to stay in the division much longer is because the third and fourth lines haven’t been producing as much as they were in October. It has slowly been coming back to average since the beginning of November.

Craig Anderson has also not been playing as well as he was in October. Honestly, I think that the biggest reason the Aves were successful in October was because Anderson couldn’t be scored on.

He had one of the top five save percentages in the NHL, and the same is true for his goals against average. However, he is now 15th in save percentage and 24th in goals against average.

The difference in these numbers points to a completely different problem as well. Defense.

Honestly, before I looked at these stats, I never thought about the Aves having a bad defense. However, since there’s such a big difference between the save percentage and the GAA, that means that the defense is leaving him out to dry.

The way I interpret this is that Anderson is average in his save percentage, but the other team is still scoring a lot of goals. The reason for that, would be defense.

My thought is that the Aves have finally started to come back to Earth. I think that they started out the season very well, and have been playing average in November and December. If they continue to play “average”, they will begin to sink in the standings to an “average” position.

My bet is that the Aves make the playoffs, but are at the bottom of the playoff tree. I’m thinking that they could be the 6th, 7th or 8th place team.

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