Yeah, they're saying specifically a small, hardened avalanche that buried the tent, forcing the team to cut and dig their way out and then try to regroup elsewhere with their injured members.So it was an avalanche?
The speculation is that with the terror of being buried in their sleep and 3 severely injured group members to worry about, they made the mistake of trying to flee to the cover of the forest below and build fires to stay warm, but eventually succumbed to hypothermia anyway.
Of course, none of this is "proven" and never will be. They're just saying that the research shows it was all highly plausible on that night considering the exact slope of the hill, the wind conditions, the particular size of the avalanche that would have broken off under such conditions and the type of injuries that sort of avalanche would have caused. And since most mountaineering folk have always thought it was an avalanche but didn't know how it would have happened under those particular conditions, the fact that it is now shown that it could have happened that way is enough for them.