If you believe in the wisdom of hockey’s stat geeks, the Avalanche’s young talent is overrated, winning the Central Division was a mirage and the math foreshadows Colorado taking a nasty fall on the ice during the upcoming NHL season.

“We’re going analytics, are we?” Avs executive Joe Sakic said, with a mixture of amusement and contempt for the numbers that suggest his team is more lucky than good.

Advanced metrics are all the rage in sports. Who needs the expertise or experience of Hall of Famers Patrick Roy or Sakic when you trust the real truth and most meaningful secrets of the game can be mined from statistics? Although so bad at algebra in high school that I took up typing for a living, the fancy hockey stats known as Corsi and Fenwick declare Colorado is so bad at the basic skill of puck possession, the Avs are no threat to win a Stanley Cup anytime soon.

“You make me feel so good,” Roy told me, “because I’m not a math guy, either. And I’m happy that way.”

Fancy stats? Roy doesn’t need no stinkin’ fancy stats. No offense, all you nerds working the computers 24/7 at the world headquarters of Fenwick and Corsi, but Mr. Roy cannot hear what your fancy stats say because of the Stanley Cup rings clogging his ears.

“At the end of the day, it’s who wins the game,” said Sakic, citing the one statistic that matters most to him. “I know with our group, watching them all the time, they were never out of it. They never quit. And in almost all the third periods, when the game was on the line, we had the puck the majority of the time.”

Without reaching too deep into the pocket protector for a dissertation on hockey’s advanced metrics, former NHL journeyman goalie Jim Corsi developed a measure of puck possession by calculating any shot attempt, whether it is on net, missed or blocked. His logic seems sound. A player can’t shoot if he doesn’t have the puck on his stick. Biscuits on the basket.

In the most reliable applications of Corsi and Fenwick, the Avs were rated among the bottom six teams in the league, while somehow compiling 112 points in the standings during the 2013-14 regular season. The implication was clear: Colorado was rescued by goalie Semyon Varlamov standing on his head and was uncommonly lucky in close games. Any big regression to the mean by Varly, and the Avalanche figures to be in big trouble to make the playoffs.

And, sure enough, during their first-round playoff elimination at the hands of Minnesota, playing much of the time without banged-up centers Matt Duchene and John Mitchell, the Avalanche often appeared amateurishly bad at merely advancing the puck out from the defensive zone and too seldom established an organized offensive attack, especially after a cheap shot by the Wild’s Matt Cooke sidelined Tyson Barrie with a knee injury.

“We know we need to control the play a little more than we did last year. And we expect to do that,” Sakic said. “But I don’t think we really needed the analytics to tell us; we saw it ourselves.”

While Corsi is a useful tool in hockey analysis, my basic problem with the stat is: Not all shots or scoring opportunities are created equal. Dangerous scoring opportunities are a far better measure of offense than merely throwing rubber in the direction of the net. The real beauty of having Nathan MacKinnon and Duchene on the Avalanche’s side is their ability to create those take-a-breath-away plays when any goalie is left defenseless.

The math says the Avs have no shot against the Kings, Blackhawks and established heavyweights. But don’t tell Roy the odds.

“You have no idea how these guys want to win,” said Roy, who loves the Avalanche’s playoff chances with this team’s mixture of youth on the rise and proven veterans such as new addition Jarome Iginla.

“I’m not saying we’re ready today, but we’re certainly in the right direction to win. Could were surprise the world of hockey by winning? Last year we approached it by wanting to surprise the world of hockey. And I think if we could go even deeper in the playoffs, that would surprise the world of hockey.”

Mark Kiszla: mkiszla@denverpost.com or twitter.com/markkiszla