The Colorado Avalanche won the President's Trophy last year on the backs of one of the oldest rosters in the NHL by average age. However, the team came up short of their ultimate goal of winning the Stanley Cup and were swept out of the conference final round by the Vegas Golden Knights. With the departure of Chris MacFarland, Joe Sakic, temporarily back at the helm as GM of Colorado's roster, had a few goals to accomplish this offseason.
So far, Sakic has been successful at accomplishing those goals on paper, however it remains to be seen whether they will bring about better on-ice results for next season.
Checklist
The Avalanche came into last season as the oldest roster in the NHL, and ths season, needed to find some younger, cheaper talent to bank on for the coming years.
With the signings of Fyodor Svechkov, Zachary L'Heureux, and most recently Fabian Lysell, the team has added three under 27-year-old players to bring them down to the fourth oldest roster in the league. The moves helped to shore up the depth for the bottom half of their roster, with L'Heureux and Svechkov projecting to regular roles. Lysell, as the Bruins 2021 first round pick, has some upside at forward and should be able to help the Colorado Eagles as they try to make it back to the Calder Cup Final, and could push for a main roster spot as well.
With the moves made by Sakic so far, the Avalanche have managed to keep ahold of their most important roster pieces and have shed major future salary implications by trading Valeri Nichushkin, Ross Colton, and Jack Drury.
Brushing against the top
However, one thing Sakic hasn't done quite yet is balance the book sheets or the current season, as with the signing of Lysell, the team sits above the cap ceiling. The Avs will have to make some roster moves before the season starts to become cap compliant, especially with retained salary on players like Samuel Girard counting against them in the coming season.
That isn't eased by the fact that recent signings for the NHL's top young talent has hit the double digit millions as of this year. Leo Carlsson broke NHL records with an 18 million dollar AAV contract, and 2023 first overall pick Connor Bedard of the Chicago Blackhawks will be earning 15 million dollars a year once his next contract kicks in. Those numbers are eye popping, and with Cale Makar due for a pay raise next year, it's fair to wonder if the Avs will be able to afford him.
For his part, Makar has made every indication he'd like to stay with Colorado, and the Avs do have 32 million dollars in projected cap space for next year according to PuckPedia. But that would require not re-signing any of their other pending free agents.
It's a tall task, but Sakic should be able to manage it until the Avalanche find their next GM.