Optimizing NHL Performance: How Firstbeat Data Drives Player Insights with the Colorado Avalanche

In this article, based on an interview with Alexi Pianosi, Head Strength & Conditioning Coach for the Colorado Avalanche, we explore how one of the NHL’s top teams uses physiological data to monitor player readiness, manage workload, and sustain performance throughout the demands of a long season.

Watch the full interview below or keep reading for the key insights and practical takeaways.

What is Firstbeat and Why Does It Matter?

Firstbeat provides coaches with physiological insights into athletes’ internal load. While external load metrics such as distance covered, high-speed running, or minutes played show the work performed, they do not reveal the physiological cost of that work.

Internal load captures how the body responds. Because athletes can respond very differently to the same training session or match, monitoring internal load provides critical context that external load alone cannot. Together, they give coaches a more complete picture of athlete readiness, adaptation, and recovery.

Decoding Practices: The Numbers That Matter

While training camp offers a flurry of data collection, the NHL season quickly becomes a marathon of games, tight schedules, and limited ice time. Practices, though less frequent as the season progresses, remain the cornerstone for internal load monitoring.

The Avalanche relies particularly on TRIMP per minute, a measure of training intensity, to help coaches tailor practices to desired demands.

TRIMP/min shows the rate at which training load (measured as TRIMP) is accumulated over a period of time. This indicates the load density of a session, activity, or game.

As a result, you can see the internal load placed on an athlete and compare sessions of different lengths, as well as compare shorter, high-intensity sessions with game data that may last several hours.

“When I go in to talk to our head coach about what your practice should look like today, usually we’re talking about how long practice is going to be and then how intense do we want it to be?” says Alexi.

“Our head coach has now become very fluent. He really enjoys the TRIMP per minute numbers. It’s almost a fun guessing game… did it match the feel on the ice?”

Different practice structures demand different intensities:

• Easy: TRIMP/min of 0.8–1.2 (morning skates, light work)
• Moderate: 1.3–1.6 (standard)
• Hard: 1.7–2.0 (intense, but only sustainable in short durations)

This data-driven feedback loop not only helps design practices but also quickly flags anomalies, players whose workload was unusually high or low, prompting further investigation: Are they coming off illness? Was their role or position changed for that session?

HRV and Player Specificity: There Is No One-Size-Fits-All

The Avalanche also integrates daily heart rate variability (HRV) monitoring, to establish individualized recovery baselines for each player.

Every morning, players complete a brief HRV assessment as part of their daily routine.

“Our players take their HRV every morning,” Alexi explains. “We’re set up in the breakfast room, either at our home arena or practice arena, or the meal room at a hotel on the road. Players come in, sit down, put headphones on with some calming music, and put a chest strap on. We do a quick minute-and-a-half collection, and then they’re good to go.”

However, Alexi is quick to point out that HRV data should never be viewed in isolation.

“Just because your HRV number is low, it’s not necessarily a bad thing. Let’s think about it in context. Let’s think about it relative to your norm.”

This individualized approach is central to how the Avalanche use HRV. Some players naturally have higher resting HRV and recover quickly, while others tend to have lower HRV and may accumulate training load differently.

Rather than comparing players to one another, the focus is on identifying meaningful changes from each athlete’s normal range.

By tracking individual trends over time, coaches can spot when a player’s recovery, readiness, or physiological response begins to deviate from their baseline.

These insights can then inform training modifications, recovery strategies, rest days, or conversations that help uncover underlying fatigue, illness, travel demands, or life stressors before they become larger performance issues.

Beyond the Skaters: Special Considerations for Goalies and Low-Minute Players

One eye-opener in the data Alexi has noticed is goalies: their TRIMP often exceeds that of other players despite less skating distance, owing to intense isometric and aerobic effort required for high-alert, explosive play. “Their nervous system is on overdrive for two and a half hours,” notes Alexi.

Low-minute or scratched players present another riddle. They may appear less taxed, but nervous system activation (watching, stressing, or being ready) can still generate significant load and post-game fatigue.

For those not routinely hitting high-intensity heart rate zones, additional work, especially short, intense intervals, is structured, preferably on-ice for specificity and athlete engagement.

“Those low-minute guys, although they’re creating probably less metabolic fatigue, I think they almost get, depending on their nervous system, more neural fatigue because they’re just waiting and they’re amped up and they’re, you know, waiting to go. And I think that manifests the next day in their recovery and their fatigue.”

Building Trust: Culture and Communication Are King

Buy-in, from both coaches and players, is essential when introducing any new technology or monitoring system. Alexi believes in keeping metrics simple, relevant, and directly linked to the player’s or coach’s goals. For players, showing the correlation between heart rate data and tangible performance gains wins advocacy, especially when backed by key leaders like captains.

Data-Informed Recovery in Return-To-Play

The Colorado Avalanche uses Firstbeat throughout every return-to-play process, regardless of injury length.

As players progress through rehab, it helps them understand not just the work they’re doing on the ice, but how they’re responding to it physiologically.

They’re looking at whether players are accumulating enough high-intensity work, whether they are ready for the next stage, and whether the coaches are pushing too hard and creating unnecessary fatigue. It helps them to find the right balance between building fitness and protecting recovery.

HR and TRIMP data help to ensure progression is systematic and not rushed. Overdoing intense skates can delay recovery, so HR data confirms workload prescriptions are hitting but not exceeding optimal thresholds.

Changing the Game with Data-Driven Culture

For the Colorado Avalanche, data is not about collecting more numbers. It is about creating a clearer picture of how each player is responding to the demands of training, competition, travel, and rehabilitation.

By combining heart rate analytics, TRIMP, HRV, and individualized baselines, the Avalanche can move beyond generic workload monitoring and make more informed decisions about practice intensity, recovery needs, return-to-play progression, and player readiness.

As Alexi makes clear, the value of physiological data lies in context. A number alone rarely tells the full story. But when that number is understood in relation to the individual, the schedule, the session, and the broader performance picture, it becomes a powerful tool for guiding action.

For more insights on how Firstbeat can help support your coaching work, download our free training load guide for ice hockey coaches.