And then there was one...
The "winner" of the Mile High Hockey census, or in other words, the Avs player who exceeded fans' expectations most this past season, is goaltender Calvin Pickard.
After bursting onto the scene in the fall of 2014 with some stellar play while Semyon Varlamov and Reto Berra were both injured, Pickard went from being a ho-hum AHL goaltender to one of the biggest goaltending surprises of the NHL. Pickard was more than just serviceable, which is all most Avs fans could have originally asked for, he was shutting teams down and putting the team on his shoulders, winning games almost by himself or keeping the Avs in games they had no business being in.