Colorado Avalanche in a Slump: 6 Players Who Must Step Up To Right the Ship

The Colorado Avalanche got off to arguably the hottest start of any team in the NHL, winning five of their first six games.

Since then, things have cooled off for Colorado, which has only won three games since that very hot start.

The Avalanche sit at a very mediocre 8-9-1, with all but about two of those victories coming on the road.

The penalty kill, which started out very hot, has fallen into disrepair once again and now sits 27th in the league at an atrocious 76.2 percent.

Long story made short, the Avalanche need to step up their game if they want to avoid falling into the same type of doldrums they were in during the second half of last season.

Erik Johnson

Erik Johnson has a lot of expectations on his shoulders, as the Avalanche invested an awful lot in order to get him.

The Avalanche gave up a power forward and an incredibly promising young prospect in Kevin Shattenkirk to obtain this former No. 1 overall draft pick.

Johnson has only nine assists on the season—almost all of them on the power play—and has largely been an offensive non-factor while at even strength.

Even worse, Johnson has frequently been Jekyll-and-Hyde while on the ice. He can go from making a horrendous turnover to making a great play to break up a two-on-one break in the span of about 40 seconds.

This type of play is definitely not good for a guy who regularly logs more than 20 minutes of ice-time. EJ needs to find some consistency in both his own end and in the offensive zone if he is going to have the kind of impact that the Avalanche need him to have.

Milan Hejduk

This isn't to say that Hejduk has played poorly for the Avalanche so far this season—far from it. Hejduk has always been the picture of consistency in an Avalanche uniform.

The major difference now is that Hejduk is now the captain of this Avalanche team, and more will be expected.

The production will always be there with Hejduk, but he's never really been the clear-cut leader people have expected.

He's always been one of the leaders, but he's always had guys like Foote, Sakic, Forsberg and even Ryan Smyth for a while—all of whom were stronger leaders.

Now that Hejduk is the man, he's going to have to step up and show that he is capable of being that type of leader.

Cody McLeod

Cody McLeod is another one of those night-and-day kinds of players.

On some nights, you always see McLeod because he is always in the middle of everything. He's banging bodies, getting in the middle of scrums and getting under the other team's skin.

Then there are other nights where he is completely invisible. A guy with Cody McLeod's role cannot be invisible for his team.

Perhaps I'm not being entirely fair to McLeod—the type of dump-and-chase system that the Avalanche always run just might not fit his style of play, but he has to do something in order to get more involved.

McLeod currently has one assist on the season and has a minus-two rating.

Now, I know that McLeod doesn't get a lot of ice time, but he has to start making more of an impact in the time that he does get on the ice.

It would be a shame if McLeod, who has a ton of ability, became Colorado's next David Koci.

Chuck Kobasew

Kobasew has probably been the biggest bust signing for the Avalanche this past offseason.

Kobasew was expected to come in and provide some secondary scoring on a team that desperately needed it.

To this point, I think it's safe to say that Kobasew hasn't really delivered the goods on this one.

Kobasew has some good ability, and he's still young (just 29 years old), but he is having trouble making things click.

This could be partly because he's still learning the system that the Avalanche run—and that's fine.

It could also be because he seems to get shuffled from line to line each night and is having a hard time finding chemistry with any specific group of guys.

Whatever it is, if Kobasew were able to step up and really start being the secondary scoring weapon that Colorado wanted him to be, it would definitely make things a lot more difficult for opponents.

As it is, his two goals and one assist with a minus-seven put him in Brandon Yip territory—and that's not a good thing.

Jan Hejda

All in all, I think that Hejda is having an alright season thus far. I think he just needs to be a bit more consistent.

Hejda is currently a team worst minus-12, and that number isn't as bad as it could be due to a number of last-minute empty-net goals. However, it's balanced out by the fact that Hejda sees a lot of time on a penalty kill that often seems to be completely lost.

Hejda is not alone in his struggles on the blue-line by any stretch of the imagination, but he is expected to log a decent amount of ice time and must be better.

He has done a good job of adding physicality to a team that had been lacking in that area.

Still, Hejda needs to work on communicating with his other defensive partners a bit better so that they can all remain on the same page and not start running around in their own end.

Semyon Varlamov

Varlamov's season to this point has been a story of two completely different months.

In the month of October, Varlamov was 5-3-0 with a 2.50 goals against average and a save percentage of .924—and the Avalanche were sitting pretty.

In November, things have taken a decided turn for the worse in Colorado's net.

Varlamov has yet to win a game in November, posting an 0-4-1 record with one no-decision because he was pulled during the game against Detroit (Giguere took the loss).

His goals against average has been just a touch over four, and his save percentage has been an absolutely abysmal .831.

People who know the Avalanche know that this is a young team that still makes mistakes and has been known to take large chunks of games off each night.

In order for Colorado to be successful, they must have a consistent goaltender.

Varly may be at a disadvantage, since he has no regular goaltending coach. Also, he has yet to go through a full season as the unquestioned starter, the Western Conference plays a different style of hockey than the Eastern Conference and his youth could mean a shaky confidence.

All of that may be true, but if the Avalanche are going to get out of this rut, then Varlamov is going to have to step up big time—or risk losing his starting job to the veteran J.S. Giguere.

Kevin Goff is a Featured Columnist for the Colorado Avalanche and NHL on Bleacher Report. For more NHL news and discussion,