Colorado Avalanche: Long Home Stretch Will Paint Picture of the Team's Season

The Colorado Avalanche have just played the first two games of a long stretch of games that will be at home.

The Avalanche are two games into a stretch of 14-of-18 games that will take place on the ice of The Pepsi Center, and it is a stretch that will go a long way towards determining what kind of success the Avalanche will have as a whole.

As a team, the Avalanche absolutely must be better at home than they were last season if they wish to gain enough wins and points to make the playoffs.  

Just to paint a picture of this, at the end of December last season the Avalanche were a grand total of 20-13-5 and sat at about fifth place in the Western Conference. To that point of the season, the Avalanche were 10-6-2 at home. Not amazing, but still enough to have them in playoff contention.

The Avalanche went on a horrendous streak during the second half of the season that saw them lose a ton of games everywhere and finish the season with the second-worst record in the NHL.

In fact, prior to the Avalanche beating the Kings on Sunday, the Avalanche had not had a regulation win at home since January 24th, 2011 when they beat the St. Louis Blues.

The Avalanche did manage a shootout win against Columbus and a thrilling overtime victory in the season finale that sent legendary Avalanche defenseman, Adam Foote, out on a high note; but regulation wins were something that the Avalanche just couldn't find for a long time.

As of right now, the Avalance are 1-3 at home for the 2011-2012 season, but there is now reason to hope that the Avalanche may have found their scoring touch again.

Despite being out-shot by the Kings on their Sunday game by a margin of two-to-one, the Avalanche defense played a very solid game. Semyon Varlamov was again fantastic, and the guys that scored the goals for the Avalanche were the guys that really needed to get things going, especially Matt Duchene.

Duchene scored just his second goal of the season, but he did it in a dramatic fashion with an amazing shot that had to give him a huge boost of confidence.

Both Milan Hejduk and Chuck Kobasew had also been in scoring ruts and both found the back of the net as well.

This is a very important part of the season for the Colorado Avalanche because they know that good teams that make the playoffs take advantage of the games that they get at home and get points.

It's hard to tell a team that games this early in the season carry playoff implications, but they absolutely do. If the Avalanche are in a fight for playoff position at the end of the season, their success during this portion of the season will be something that either gives them a leg up, or holds them down.

The Avalanche play the Phoenix Coyotes next on Wednesday at The Pepsi Center, and Colorado will be looking to take advantage of home ice once again.