After two weeks of their best hockey of the year, are the Colorado Avalanche back and playing how everyone thought they would at the beginning of the year? -- Zach Dills, Tempe, Ariz.

Melrose: Despite Joe Sakic's return to the lineup, the Avs suffered a bit of a hiccup in their loss to the Florida Panthers on Thursday night. They wanted to give Patrick Roy the night off and David Aebischer wasn't great in goal. But yes, the Avs are now playing the way they're supposed to play. They're an elite team, so it's not really about what we expect as much as what they're supposed to be doing.

I think Colorado was embarrassed by how it was playing, and should have been -- it cost Bob Hartley his job. Tony Granato has certainly proven to be an energetic, passionate coach. He came in with a unique way of spreading the same message and as a result, they're a very motivated club.

Roy has been solid in the net. And in their last five games, even without Sakic, Peter Forsberg has 13 points, Alex Tanguay has 7 points, and Milan Hejduk has really been on fire with 12 points in that span.

I don't know if the Avs will catch Dallas and Detroit because they're so far behind, but they certainly look like a playoff team again.

What do the New York Rangers have to do to win a game? Do you think Jim Schoenfeld would make a better head coach than Brian Trottier? -- Steve Buttafuoco, North Babylon, N.Y.

Melrose: The Rangers are among the NHL's worst defenses, so the bottom line is they've got to play better on the blue line. And they're not the Dallas Stars or the St. Louis Blues, who can score a ton of goals. If you're not an offensive machine, you've got to be very good defensively. New York has got to cut down on goals allowed per game and compete harder at both ends of the rink.

Don't forget that Schoenfeld and Terry O'Reilly are in the locker room with Trottier every game. When a coach gets fired, you have to look at his assistants, too. You can't just blame the head coach. There is enough blame in New York to go around to everyone.

Why is it that the Dallas Stars don't beat the lowly teams in the NHL, then come out and have success against the upper-level teams? -- Joe, Arlington, Texas

Melrose: Dallas has only lost 10 games this season. They Stars played very well in their win over San Jose on Thursday night and right now Marty Turco is the best, most consistent goalie in the NHL. The Stars don't have a weakness: they can score from three lines, check, get physical, and they have a great defensive system. They recently had a three-game skid, but the bottom line is that whenever they play against Detroit or San Jose, they prove how good they are. I don't anticipate many bumps in the road for the Stars.

Who should be the Detroit Red Wings' starting goalie: Curtis Joseph or Manny Legace? -- Marcus Piepsney, Chicago

Melrose: If you're going by numbers, it should be Manny Legace. But that said, let's be real -- the Red Wings are paying Curtis Joseph millions of dollars to bring another Stanley Cup to Detroit.

When the first round of playoffs come around, it better be CuJo in net for Detroit or there will be problems in Hockeytown.

Why is it that when there is talk about the powerhouses of the Western Conference, the St. Louis Blues are always left out? I would guess it's because they haven't won a Stanley Cup, but they are consistently a top playoff team in the mighty West. Do they need to knock Detroit out of the playoffs before they achieve "powerhouse" status? -- Zach, St. Louis

Melrose: We've been looking for St. Louis to be a powerhouse for the last four or five years. I picked the Blues to win the Stanley Cup last year, so now they have got to show us something. We thought they were great, they should be great, and they've spent the money, but they haven't got the job done in the playoffs. Until they show us that they're a great team in the postseason and beat Dallas, Detroit and Colorado, you've got to think of them as a second-rung team. Potential isn't anything until you get the job done in the playoffs, and they've yet to accomplish that.

Why are the Boston Bruins still holding on to Kyle McLaren when they could use some force on defense or in net? -- Tim Crane, Washington, D.C.

Melrose: Well, obviously the Bruins haven't found a deal that they like yet. They struggled a bit through December and haven't been playing great. I don't think that Boston is as good as it showed at the start of the year, but I also don't think it's as bad as they're showing now.

The Bruins haven't been able to score and the injury to Sergei Samsonov certainly hurts. I think the Bruins would love to deal McLaren and get him out of their hair, but they haven't found a deal they like yet. And when you have an asset like McLaren, you can't make a bad deal. This opportunity only comes around once in a long while, and they've got to make sure they get a very good deal.

All the talk about Ken Hitchcock being a master of positional hockey made us Philadelphia Flyers fans excited when he was hired. But at this point in the season it looks like the same Flyers team that's been around for the last seven seasons. Is the dump-and-chase part of Hitchcock's system? When will the positional hockey stressed by Hitchcock start adding up to some wins? -- Dirk, Blacksburg, Va.

Melrose: Hitchcock's system is about making no mistakes. That means if you get to the blue line and you don't have a play, the puck goes deep. You don't try and beat guys and you don't try and freelance. It's an ugly, boring, defense-first style. And that's what you're getting in Philadelphia, a Flyers team that is very good defensively.

But they're having trouble scoring, which none of us thought would happen. Jeremy Roenick is leading the team with 12 goals, Keith Primeau has only nine and Simon Gagne is struggling with six. Mark Recchi hasn't been great offensively and John LeClair is hurt. So, you are seeing Hitchcock's game and you're going to be seeing it for the rest of the season and through the playoffs. That's how he coaches and that's how his teams play.

E.J. Hradek quoted Scotty Bowman as saying that "coaching is the ability to get on the bus with the best players." Seeing Tony Granato's great start with some of the 'best players', it sounds like what a coach has to do is let the players play and remind them of a few things from time to time (like defense). What is your take on what a coach does? -- Catherine Waldron, Littleton, Colo.

Melrose: A good coach motivates. He gives you a system to play in, and every system in the NHL is basically very similar. Every coach is stressing the same things. But the coach that can get his players to respond when they're tired, injured, through January and February and through the playoffs when they're beat up, that's what coaching is all about.

Coaching is not about X's and O's -- everyone knows X's and O's and systems -- they're a dime a dozen. Coaches that win are guys that motivate and change the momentum of a game by doing something or saying something.

Barry Melrose, a former NHL defenseman and coach, is a hockey analyst for ESPN.