TAMPA, FLA. — After the Avalanche beat the Florida Panthers on Friday night, it stood at 69 points with 32 games remaining. According to the data-driven Sportsclubstats.com, that gave the Avs a 99.7 percent chance of making the NHL playoffs. Can that really be right, and can this really be real?

The Avs have quietly become, in my mind, the best story in hockey this season. It can’t be overstated what a mess this franchise was just a few months ago. The Avs were about as relevant in Denver as vinyl albums to a teenager.

“It’ll take years to dig out of this mess,” many thought. “Why would Patrick Roy want to take a job with this organization again?” others said, smirking.

Thirty-two games is still a lot, nearly half the season. The Avs had a 12-point lead on the ninth-place team in the Western Conference, Phoenix — or, if you’d like, a six-game lead with 32 to go. When it’s put that latter way, it doesn’t seem like a 99.7 percent level of probability, does it? But when three-point games are factored in, it’s not as clear-cut as other sports with zero-sum games.

Roy, Joe Sakic and the players have gotten most of the credit for this remarkable turnaround, as they should. But this really has been an organizationwide thing, so I’d like to give a little credit to some who you don’t hear much about.

Let’s start with the Avs’ assistant coaches. Unfortunately, the team has a policy toward the media regarding assistant coaches: Nobody can talk to them. I entered the BB&T Center early Friday morning to watch the Avs’ morning skate and came across the room housing the assistant coaches. Andre Tourigny responded to my hello, albeit with his head down and the enthusiasm of a kid entering the dentist’s chair. The team philosophy is that the head coach should be the only voice of the team.

That’s OK. Let me tell you about Tourigny anyway: He’s probably not going to be around here too long. He is head coach material, already being added to the back-pocket lists of GMs for future candidates. He is responsible for the defense, and while that remains the worrisome area with this team, the job he has done working with players so that they understand the system has been unanimously praised by said players.

The other assistant on the Avs’ bench, Tim Army, has a personality that befits his last name. Army doesn’t call out instructions to Avs players in practice; he croaks them, in a voice as hoarse as to rival a teenage girl at a Bieber show. A longtime head coach at Providence College, Army was retained by Roy from the previous administration, which says something. Army mostly works with offensive players and special-teams systems but does a little of everything.

Video coach Mario Duhamel is the Oz of the assistant staff. With his head always hidden by the upturned screen of a laptop computer, Duhamel would seem the nerd of the bunch. But he was a head coach for four years in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, so this is no cut-and-paste computer jockey. Roy said he wanted his video coach to be one with previous head coaching experience, so they could see the game from both vantage points. Duhamel, along with others you’ve heard more about such as Francois Allaire and Adam Foote, have been home run hires.

There are others in the Avs’ dressing room that nobody hears about. Trainer Matt Sokoloski has been with the team from Day One since moving from Quebec, and he does his job in a fiercely competent manner. The guys who have to make sure the bags are packed and on the buses and plains, trains and automobiles in timely fashion are highly prized by the boys in the room and the coaches.

Ask some people in hockey who has the toughest job, and head equipment guy comes in first. In that case, Mark Miller is another leftover hire from the previous administration.

Their actions are speaking louder than words for Roy and the Avs in their great run.

Adrian Dater: adater@ denverpost.com or twitter.com/adater