The Colorado Avalanche were the class of the NHL during the regular season. A conference finals loss to the Vegas Golden Knights can only be described as a disappointing ending for a club that had serious Stanley Cup aspirations. As we noted in the March Central Division Notebook though, the Avs have already reloaded their roster since their 2022 cup win.
The Avs original contention cohort from their rebuild has exited their prime and it’s a new group centered around Cale Makar and Martin Necas that is now the focal point for the Avalanche. To continue to contend, this is the group they need to continue to bolster, with those on the older side available as possible trade chips. Nathan MacKinnon is the obvious exception as he’s one of the top few forwards in the NHL and is good enough to be an anchor talent for the forward group well into his 30s.
The Avalanche will have to navigate a tight cap situation as they continue to reload. The long contracts on their books are primarily players in their original contention cohort. That could make it more difficult to shift the roster back into a prime aged cohort, with NMC/NTC layers on top of the remaining term. The expectation has to be that a group of Gabriel Landeskog, Nazem Kadri, Brock Nelson, Josh Manson and Devon Toews will slow down over the next few years and they’re all under contract for at least 2 more seasons. The Avs will have to find a way to offset that decline, either by moving some of that group out, by adding prime ages pieces, or finding developing players that can contribute in the NHL to offset it.
Of the options to offset the decline of their veterans, the Avalanche’s pipeline looks like the least viable option. They’ve continually used draft capital to bolster their current roster for a number of years and the pipeline is flowing at a trickle as a result. The Avs don’t have much for draft capital until the 2029 draft, so using draft picks to acquire younger help is also a tall task. That leads us back to continuing to turn over the roster and making tough decisions to move out core veterans as the likely most viable reloading option. Might the Avs have a summer blockbuster akin to the Rantanen deal in store for us this summer?
