Don’t look now, but the NHL offseason has come to a close with training camps opening this week. It seems like just the other day that the Vegas Golden Knights won the Stanley Cup for the first time in their franchise’s brief history, but the unrelenting annual sports cycle slows down for no one.
For the Colorado Avalanche, returning to the ice signals an official turning of the page on a disappointing 2022-23 season. Despite experiencing some of the worst injury luck in the league last year, the Avalanche managed to win the Central Division, but were upset by the Seattle Kraken in the first round of the playoffs amid difficult circumstances.
General manager Chris MacFarland spearheaded a busy summer in which the Avalanche replaced half of its forward group from last season. The organization also waved goodbye to defenseman Erik Johnson in free agency, who ranks seventh on the franchise’s all-time games played list.
All that is to say that the Avalanche roster has been notably refreshed ahead of this season. Yet, such a level of turnover draws out questions about forging chemistry on and off the ice, as well as replacing the production of the departed players. Those are legitimate concerns and two of several the Avalanche must address before and during the upcoming campaign.
With that, let’s dive into five of the biggest questions facing the Avalanche ahead of the 2023-24 NHL season, and how their responses will dictate the team’s fortunes in the regular season and beyond.
Can the Avalanche’s New Additions Support the Stars?
When it comes to the play of the Avalanche’s stars, you know exactly what sort of production you’re going to get every season.
Since his breakout 2017-18 season, Nathan MacKinnon has scored at a 42-goal, 110-point pace and his 1.35 points per game (P/G) are the fourth-highest in the league over that span.
Mikko Rantanen – the Avalanche’s hulking winger – has clipped at a 40-goal, 96-point pace since the start of the 2017-18 season. Only seven players have scored more goals than the Finnish forward during that time.
On the blue line, 2022 Norris Trophy winner Cale Makar is doing his best to revolutionize the position. Despite missing 22 games last season, the 24-year-old defender still scored 17 goals (sixth among all defensemen) and scored at the second-highest P/G rate in the league on defense behind only Erik Karlsson.
That elite triumvirate represent a foundation that almost every team in the NHL would trade their current core to possess, but the nature of hockey means that they still need an adequate support system to achieve postseason success.
Partly due to injury, the Avalanche didn’t receive the necessary level of offensive support that was needed last season. The scoring gap between Rantanen (the second-highest scoring forward) and the now departed J.T. Compher (third-highest) was 53 points. By goals, MacKinnon ranked second with 42 while Artturi Lehkonen (who missed 18 games) ranked third with 21, a 21-goal difference. While the gulf between the stars and depth players was vast, healthier campaigns from Lehkonen and Valeri Nichushkin (who missed 29 games) would have allowed them to significantly close the gap.
In an attempt to not repeat the mistakes of last offseason where the outgoing Nazem Kadri and Andre Burakovsky were not fully replaced, the Avalanche acquired a number of new forward options.
Primarily, Ryan Johansen, Ross Colton, Miles Wood, Tomas Tatar, and Jonathan Drouin will form Colorado’s new middle-six charges. This should help the team be better prepared to weather multiple injuries up and down the lineup as well as offer crucial support scoring so that the burden of offense isn’t solely laid at the feet of the team’s superstars.
Time will tell if acquiring these players was the best use of the team’s limited resources, but they appear more than capable at first glance.
How Will the Avalanche’s Forward Lines Shake Out?
With the Avalanche defense virtually untouched, the team’s forward group saw the most turnover this offseason. At this point, the only players who are locked into top-six spots are MacKinnon, Rantanen, Nichushkin, and Lehkonen. This leaves one center slot available as well as one opening on the wing.
As the two most significant offseason acquisitions, Johansen and Colton will battle for the second-line center role. The veteran Johansen likely starting with the upper hand given his experience, but Colton – who has scored at a first-line rate despite bottom-six usage – could surprise with a strong camp or hot start to the season.
At the bottom of the lineup, Ben Meyers, Logan O’Connor, Andrew Cogliano, and Frederik Olofsson are likely to battle for the final forward spots. Meyers possesses slightly more experience at the NHL level and can play center, and O’Connor and Cogliano featured regularly during the Avalanche’s recent Cup run. Peter Holland and Joel Kiviranta are also attending training camp on professional tryout agreements (PTOs), but they face an uphill battle to secure contracts and won’t figure too heavily into NHL plans.
That leaves Wood, Tatar, and Drouin as the leading candidates for the remaining middle-six wing roles. Drouin shares an existing relationship with MacKinnon from their days in junior and may get the first crack at riding shotgun with the Avalanche’s superstar. Wood is better suited to a third-line role against slightly weaker competition, so Tatar may slide into the top six.
No matter how the forward lines eventually shake out, the Avalanche should be much stronger up and down the lineup compared to last season, health permitting.
Which Avalanche Prospects Could Graduate to the NHL?
As a perennial Stanley Cup contender, the Avalanche naturally do not have many regular openings in their lineup heading into the upcoming season. Even so, I recently highlighted three Avalanche prospects who might play NHL games this season.
Given that the forward rotation is set, the Avalanche’s top forward prospects – namely Jean-Luc Foudy and Oskar Olausson – will be in tough to get much more than a brief audition barring any serious injuries. Foudy’s skating and high-energy style could give him an advantage over other hopefuls, but even he’d do well with another year of seasoning in the American Hockey League (AHL) where he should assume a greater role in all situations for the Colorado Eagles.
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If anyone from the Avalanche’s farm system is going to stake a claim to a regular stay in the NHL this season, it’s going to be defenseman Sam Malinski, who signed as a free agent from Cornell University this past spring.
Malinski showed a glimpse of what can offer as a sixth or seventh defenseman, tallying three goals and 10 points across 14 regular-season and playoff games for the Eagles. He finished second on the team in playoff scoring with five assists in seven games and had assumed the role of powerplay quarterback by season’s end. A stint in the AHL may be in the cards, but I’d wager that he won’t stay there for long.
Can the Avalanche Stay Healthy This Season?
The underlying storyline of the 2022-23 campaign was how the Avalanche could not stay healthy, with numerous players missing extended periods of time last season.
Of the key players in the team’s 2022 Stanley Cup win, Landeskog (82), Josh Manson (55), Bowen Byram (40), Nichushkin (29), Makar (22), Lehkonen (18), and MacKinnon (11) all faced significant time on the sidelines. The resulting inconsistent lineups and lack of chemistry were natural byproducts of such absences, so it’s of little surprise that the team struggled to hit top gear all year.
According to NHL Injury Viz, the Avalanche ranked fifth in total Cap Hit of Injured Players (CHIP), a cumulative tally of the per-game cap hits of any players missing due to injury or illness during the regular season. The Vegas Golden Knights ranked sixth, but each of the four teams with a higher CHIP were not anywhere near legitimate Cup contenders before the season began. That the Avalanche still won the Central Division is astonishing, and how far they could’ve gone if healthy will always be an unanswerable question.
Landeskog’s prolonged recovery from offseason surgery after winning the Cup is well-documented at this point, and he’s slated to also miss the entire 2023-24 regular season. It should be noted that MacFarland recently said that the captain could return for the playoffs, but that his recovery had to remain on track for that to happen. Such an inspirational return would represent a shot in the arm for the group, but they shouldn’t count on it being a guaranteed development.
Improved depth and better luck should help the Avalanche with any potential string of injuries this season. That alone should be seen as a win in 2023-24.
Who Will Be the Avalanche’s Backup Goalie?
While Alex Georgiev dispelled all doubt about his ability to perform at a high level as a full-time starting netminder last season, injuries and inconsistency have created uncertainty about who will back him up in 2023-24.
Backup goaltender Pavel Francouz has yet to fully recover from offseason adductor surgery and does not have a timeline for his return. As a result, the Avalanche are rumored to be in the market for insurance in goal with several intriguing options still available. When he’s healthy, Francouz is an above-average backup at a relatively low cap hit. Francouz was limited to 16 games last season while posting a .915 save percentage (SV%) and a 2.61 goals-against average (GAA), but he’s only played in 37 games over the past three seasons.
Beyond the external candidates, Avalanche prospect Justus Annunen could grab the opportunity and run with it while Francouz is out. The 23-year-old started 41 games for the Eagles in the AHL last season, and posted a .916 SV% and a 2.55 GAA.
If the Avalanche feel more comfortable acquiring a veteran stopgap, Annunen could be sent back to the minors for the time being and earn more reps as a full-time starter, which may be the better option for his development. Still, goaltenders are typically held back from full-time NHL duty far longer than their positional counterparts even though they may be ready for a heavier workload sooner than one would think.
Until a trade or signing is made, Annunen holds the post. It’s unlikely that he will remain in the pole position if a new netminder is acquired, but he deserves a shot nonetheless.
Is Another Stanley Cup on the Horizon for the Avalanche?
Hockey is infamously one of the most difficult sports to predict on a game-to-game basis, which makes forecasting a future Stanley Cup winner even harder. With so much potential variance in play, teams can’t do much more than try and put together the strongest team possible within the constraints of the salary cap, and hope that luck works in their favor more often than not.
The Avalanche once again enter the upcoming NHL season as legitimate Cup contenders out of the Western Conference, but the path to the playoffs remains full of a number of formidable adversaries from both conferences.
For now, the team turns its eyes towards training camp and the task of bleeding in a significant amount of new talent. One step at a time as they say, but the final destination could be magical.
Data courtesy of AHL Tracker, Natural Stat Trick, and the NHL.
