Two years ago, following an NHL-low 48-point season, the Avalanche had first dibs on the waiver wire through September. And they were excited about adding players who weren’t deemed good enough to begin the season on other teams.
Today, Colorado is one of those “other” teams — a franchise forced to waive good players it wants to keep.
The Avs are no longer a work in progress, a team looking for used parts, but a team looking to get better with what they already have. And their partners up in Loveland, the Colorado Eagles, might become the best American Hockey League affiliate the Avs have ever had.
Everything filters down.
“You can see by some of the guys who have gone on waivers and just recently sent down — if you’re watching camp closely and watching our exhibition games closely — they are really good,” Avs coach said. “Which I think speaks to the depth of our organization. It’s nice to have depth. We know we’re going to need it. We’ve seen the call-ups and injuries we’ve had over the last couple seasons. To have quality players at our disposal is a key — and keeping as many of those guys as we possibly can is really important.”
The Avs came off that miserable 48-point season and squeaked into the 2017-18 playoffs on the last night of the regular season. They had successfully turned a corner. And last season they turned another corner, taking the to a Game 7 of their second-round playoff series.
If this race was on an oval, the Avs would currently be approaching the fourth turn, given what they did in the offseason by acquiring forwards Nazem Kadri, Joonas Donskoi, Andre Burankovsky and Pierre-Edouard Bellemare.
The checkered flag appears to be within reach. The Avs, finally, are in a position to win it all.
Las Vegas oddsmakers have the Avs among the top five favorites to win Stanley Cup this season. To me, that seems like a stretch. But I’ll go with the top 10. The Avs made the final eight with their run last spring to the Western Conference semifinals. They’re definitely capable of doing that again, and more.
“The lineup is getting tougher and tougher to make, which is a good thing,” Bednar said. “It’s a tribute to the players that we’ve brought in, some of the guys we’ve developed here.”
As a result, the Avs are no longer giving the keys to young unproven prospects and telling them it’s OK if they fail.
“It goes back to what I said in my opening meeting of training camp: When I set a lineup it’s because that’s what I see it that day,” Bednar said. “But players are going to have to perform in order to stay slotted where I see them and that’s going to be a fluid thing all year.”
In two short years, the Avs have the ability to go from worst to first.
