I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: This is a pivotal season for the Avalanche.
Everyone from Chris MacFarland as general manager to Jared Bednar as head coach should be feeling the pressure.
This is the year when the excuses shouldn’t be a factor. There’s no more waiting for Gabe Landeskog. The expectation is that Valeri Nichushkin is healthy and ready to rock from the get-go. You have solid goaltending. Your starter is locked up, and your backup is one of the best in the league — a nice clap back to the days of Pavel Francouz. You have a second-line center. And this time it’s someone with veteran experience and a proven track record of reliability in the regular season and production in the playoffs.
You have Nathan MacKinnon in his prime.
You have Cale Makar in his prime.
Yet you’ve only won one series since that legendary night in Tampa Bay that ended with a Stanley Cup championship. It hasn’t been good enough. But it should be much more than that this season.
Here are three things I’d like to see from the Avs for this to be their year.
Top Six: The Best Ability is Availability
The Avs have had arguably the best top six in the NHL on paper for most of the past three years. But on paper didn’t always translate to on-ice availability.
Landeskog hasn’t played in three full seasons. In the first year, he was replaced with Evan Rodrigues, who had 39 points in 69 games. In the last two seasons, the Avs had Jonathan Drouin, who did an admirable job. Drouin produced at a clip of 62 points per 82 games in Colorado.
The problem wasn’t his production. It was his availability. He missed more than 25% of the regular season games in the last two years. And that came after Rodrigues missed 13 games. In total, Landeskog’s replacement in the top six has missed 55 games in three seasons — which comes out to 18 per season. That’s a lot of hockey for such a big piece of the roster.
And with all due respect to both of them, they were not as good as Landeskog in years past. They didn’t have his leadership, physicality, and net-front presence. The Avs finally have their captain back. He was solid in his short playoff stint and should be a factor moving forward. Even if he’s not producing at his 2022 rate.
Then there’s the second-line center issue. Somehow, in three seasons, the Avs have managed to have five players slot into that role.
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J.T. Compher did a fine job punching above his weight class in 2022-23, but he was slotted into it because Alex Newhook couldn’t develop into that role. Then there was the failed Ryan Johansen experiment, the Bowen Byram-for-Casey Mittelstadt blunder, before the team ultimately landed on Brock Nelson.
The 33-year-old has played 246 consecutive games after missing 10 games in 2021-22 with an injury. And before that, Nelson missed only two games in seven seasons. That’s the type of reliability the Avs need. And they should have it with their new full-time 2C.
Nichushkin and Artturi Lehkonen are two of the best two-way checking forwards in the game. But the fact that they’ve missed 96 and 68 games, respectively, over the past three seasons, is a huge problem. That averages out to 32 per year for Nichushkin and 22 for Lehkonen.
Let’s put that into perspective.
Since 2022-23, Nichushkin has averaged 42 goals in every 96 games and Lehkonen 29 goals per 68 games. That’s a lot of offense they’ve missed. And that doesn’t include what missing them did to the ice time of MacKinnon and Mikko Rantanen, who were far and away the two most-used forwards over the last three years.
Rantanen is gone now, and Martin Necas should be here for the foreseeable future. This will be the first year with Necas as a full-time member of the roster. If he can continue to elevate his production, I see no problem with him being a key piece of this team moving forward.
All five of these guys, the five that will make up the top two lines with MacKinnon, were not in the lineup for opening night a year ago. All for different reasons.
MacFarland built a top six that can win. They need to be available to achieve that goal.
Organizational Fit: Be More Strategic with Future Acquisitions
Basically, find the right depth pieces. It’s easier said than done.
When the Avs won the Cup in 2022, they hit on a depth acquisition in Andrew Cogliano at the trade deadline. In the following years, guys like Lars Eller, Yakov Trenin, Brandon Duhaime, Juuso Parssinen, and Jimmy Vesey were all misses.
When they won in 2022, Josh Manson came in and made an impact. They didn’t get that same impact from Sean Walker in 2024 or Ryan Lindgren in 2025.
When they needed help in the middle of the year, they picked up Nicolas Aube-Kubel off waivers, and he was a mainstay of the roster throughout the regular season and a key depth piece for the playoff run. Since then, they’ve gotten pretty much nothing out of recent waiver claims like John Ludvig and Ivan Prosvetov.
Darren Helm wasn’t supposed to be the fourth-line center in the playoffs in 2022 and was barely a factor in the regular season. The front office went out and acquired Nico Sturm to play that role. But the veteran forward, who played on the wing all year, was shifted to center and did everything and more that was asked of him. Nowadays, the coaching staff is struggling to find fits for players. Tomas Tatar was here, and then he was gone, before he had a chance to find his place. That’s just one example.
And that doesn’t even include their ability in the past to find the right type of players. They once added Nazem Kadri to be their 2C. His willingness to do anything it takes to win was an attribute missing from Johansen and Mittelstadt.
How has the pro scouting department fallen this much?
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You have to hit on those depth moves. Every additional NHL-capable player you have at your disposal is a boost to your lineup. That’s part of the reason why I like the Joel Kiviranta signing. I’d much rather they get a guy they know can play 10+ minutes per night and do a good job, then to try and sign someone for a couple hundred thousand dollars less and end up with an unplayable player.
Missing on a depth piece — even a fourth liner — means you have to go out later and trade third-round picks for guys like Duhaime or Trenin, or a second for Eller because Anton Blidh and Lukas Sedlak were failed signings.
The Avalanche need depth pieces right now. And the fact that they’re being patient makes me feel like they’re well aware that they can’t get this wrong. Trying to replace a failed depth piece later isn’t easy when you’re short on tradeable assets.
Bring in Tougher Defensemen to Play Against
Is Brent Burns enough to change the tune of the defense? I certainly don’t think he is. And I say this as someone who loves the signing for Colorado.
The reality is, the blueline is a big part of the reason why the Avs have struggled to win playoff games in recent years
The Dallas Stars are a tough team to play against. And if you get past them and the rest of the Central Division, you’re probably going to struggle with the size and physicality of the Vegas Golden Knights. Which, by the way, were no match for the Edmonton Oilers’ physicality just two months ago.
Everyone else is beefing up. Colorado needs to adapt.
The Avs have hitched their wagon to Manson for the foreseeable future, and they have their top pair locked up. Between those three, and Burns, you’ve got four solid pieces of your defense.
Then there’s Sam Malinski, who they signed for a year, which walks him to unrestricted free agency next summer. But they still added another righty in Burns afterward. So, do they trust Malinski as a full-time NHLer? If they do, are they planning on shifting him to the left? Or is he a tradeable asset that they plan on using to bring in someone else before the trade deadline?
And of course, Samuel Girard rounds out the group. He’s the only piece of the bottom two pairs who didn’t sign a contract with the Avs this summer. Which is why I’ve continued to write about him being a potential trade candidate. They want to shake up the blueline, they’re not trading Devon Toews or Makar, and they signed the other three guys over the last six weeks.
So where does that leave Girard?
Regardless of what they choose to do, I just can’t imagine that Burns in and Lindgren out is the only change they wanted. They have to figure out a way to get bigger, stronger, and tougher to play against.
