Whiny Pete DeBoer does. Still. After all these years. After all those trades. After all those draft picks.

If not now, when?

The Avs were up 2-0 in the third period on Saturday night, laughing old demons away while the fans partied back home. With about eight minutes left on the clock, PDB reached into his back pocket, pulled out the title and waved it in the face of Mikko Rantanen.

The Moose got loose. The Avs got hoosed, as they say in Saskatoon.

If not now, when?

Colorado went into Dallas with a full series from Val Nichushkin, depth at center, a fourth line with real teeth, two new goaltenders and a miraculous return from Gabe Landeskog.

The Stars came in limping after a so-so April and without top scorer Jason Robertson and top defenseman Miro Heiskanen.

Dallas won anyway.

Jared Bednar has been a tremendous servant to this organization, the kind of stand-up guy who leaves a room better than he found it.

But this Whiny Pete thing is real. And it’s not going away unless one of them does first.

Bednar’s 0-4 against DeBoer in playoff series with the Avs. He’s now 0-2 against the guy in Game 7s. Only the Tampa Bay Lightning (11.1%) and New Jersey Devils (0.0%)

“I don’t know,” a justifiably dour Nathan MacKinnon told reporters Saturday. “Make better adjustments. We had looks. Not going in. Yeah. Bad adjustments.”

Stan Kroenke and son Josh have to ask themselves a simple question: What would do MacKinnon more justice? Not rocking the boat and then watching it get tipped over by DeBoer every other spring? Or going after Dallas and/or Vegas with a new voice and a new plan?

Because hoping for Whiny Pete to miss the postseason — as he did in 2022, and you know what happened after that — isn’t a strategy.

Wyatt Johnston is 21. Big Lian Bichsel is 20. Thomas Harley is 23. Jake Oettinger, the netminder who’s surely eliminated the Avs about 38 times already, is only 26.

If not now, when?

The Mike Krzyzewski of college hockey, University of Denver coach David Carle, is just down the street. Make a call, Josh. Better yet, make five or six. If Jim Montgomery could work at the next level, so can Carle.

“All those (wins with) World Juniors and whatnot, I think it goes to show that he obviously gets the most out of his players,” Avs forward and DU alum Logan O’Connor told me late last month when Chicago was reportedly chasing Carle for its vacancy. “He’s great at developing his players. I mean, the winning culture that he represents from DU has been pretty remarkable to see. And if he decides to go pro, I have no doubt that he’s going to have great success with that as well.”

Bednar’s 9-7 in playoff overtime games with the Avs. But he’s 6-7 since 2020 and 1-4 since lifting the Cup in 2022. Bednar’s 15-17 as Avs coach in one-goal postseason tilts, and 2-7 since dancing with Lord Stanley.

“I think tactically, (Carle’s) adjustments on the fly will set him apart (in the NHL),” O’Connor said. “I think that’s something that he’s always done a good job at, even when he was an assistant — he was on the penalty kill and (I) worked a lot with him on the penalty kill, (and) his small adjustments in games that other coaches maybe wouldn’t see.”

Meanwhile, when it comes to fine margins, the Avs keep falling through the cracks.

Does Stan care? Does Josh care? The Kroenkes know football, basketball and soccer pay the big bills. You get the sense they look at hockey the way many Power 4 college athletic directors sometimes look at women’s basketball. If it’s fine, leave it alone.

And the Avs are … fine. Technically. But they’re also, potentially, teetering on the brink. GM Chris McFarland has maxed out the credit card to buy MacKinnon and Cale Makar a second title now, to no avail.

Colorado doesn’t have a first-round draft pick again until 2027, which is when Bednar’s deal is up. Landeskog’s return is the story of the year so far, feel-good or otherwise — Makar is next up for the big payday MacFarland didn’t give Rantanen, and … how did that last one work out again?

It’s a Nuggets-esque dilemma without the Nuggets’ internal drama.

Which is why I asked Bednar last week: How are things with Josh and Stan, anyway? And did their quick trigger with their other championship coach in town, Michael Malone, give you any pause?

“Well, so, (the) relationship’s great,” Bednar replied. “They’re obviously busy people, so we see them every once in a while when Josh is in town and (when) he’s around, I talk to him. I talked to him right before the playoffs. But he’s really supportive. He gives you good insight. They’re terrific owners, no question. I think no one’s going to put any more pressure on me or on our team than we put on ourselves. I think we’ve got high expectations for a long time here.

“I don’t really think about that a lot. I see a good coach (in Malone) get let go. Things aren’t working. It happens all the time. I understand it’s the business side of it. There’s a personal side to it. I know they really liked each other and liked him. You sometimes have to make a change, and that’s the business.”

The Avs blew a two-goal lead in the third Saturday. They blew a two-goal lead at home last Thursday. They blew three third-period cushions in this series.

Once is a lousy break. Two is lousy karma. Three? Three is lousy coaching. Period.

If not now, when?

“They were missing their best D and maybe their best forward, (and) we still couldn’t beat them,” MacKinnon told reporters Saturday. “Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know what we’re going to do.”

Who can you get who’s better? In Bednar’s defense, that’s a tough ask. But if the Avs don’t make a serious run at Carle, then just like many of those 50-50 pucks in Game 7, somebody else is going to beat them to it.

You wish Nuke well. First. Foremost. Always. Get right, big guy. Take as much time as you need. Even if it’s more time than you want.

. A walking cheat code. A monster truck with a cheetah’s gait, an eagle’s eye and a surgeon’s hands,

And if I’m Avalanche general manager Chris McFarland, I don’t make the same mistake twice. I don’t trust him. I don’t count on him.

Oh, I love him. Like a son. But after Nuke’s second extended absence from this locker room in eight months, this time to enter the NHL/NHLPA assistance program, I don’t assume his presence in the Stanley Cup Playoffs anymore.

And I don’t waste another year of Cale Makar, Nathan MacKinnon and Mikko Rantanen, Hall-of-Famers all, humming in their primes. I don’t sit there staring at the window while it’s open, whistling in the breeze.

“There’s a window of opportunity where these things present themselves,” longtime hockey analyst Kevin Weekes, now with the NHL Network and ESPN, told me the other day. “And sometimes, you’ve gotta pounce.”

If I’m McFarland, it’s pounce or go home.

Are we doing this? Or not? Marc-Andre Fleury would look amazing as veteran insurance to ease All-Star Alexandar Georgiev’s mounting workload between the pipes. The riddle at second-line center remains maddeningly unsolved, with vet Ryan Johansen raising more questions than answers by the day.

Hello, Calgary!

The Flames are on a precipice right now, a franchise trapped in the purgatory of “meh,” unsure whether to blow it up or go for broke. While Calgary brass is busy trying to pick a path, I make them an offer they can’t refuse. Just so long as they can solve my 2C issue and Nichushkin quandary in one fell swoop.

Elias Lindholm, you say? A 20-goal scorer in his prime (age 29) would certainly help, no question.

If we’re pouncing here, really pouncing, let’s get wacky. Let’s get Nazem Kadri back in Burgundy and Blue.

“Look, if you’re trying to get (back to the Cup final), if I’m the Avs, do I want Lindholm? Maybe,” Weekes continued. “Do I know how he fits in Colorado? I don’t know. But I do know what Naz does. I know what Naz does as a member of the Avs.”

We’ve seen this movie before, and it rocks. Glue guy. Anchor. Power play pest. Zero fear. Wild card.

More to the point, even at 33, Nasty Naz is still dealing in all the areas where the Avs could use the most help. Kadri headed into Saturday night averaging 1.2 goals, 1.6 assists and 2.7 points per 60 minutes on the power play, according to Hockey-Reference.com. That’s comparable to his rates in both 2019-20 (1.2, 2.1, 3.4) and ’20-21 (1.1, 2.1, 3.2) with Colorado. And just as effective as Lindholm’s numbers of 0.8, 2.4 and 3.1 over his first 45 appearances with the Flames.

Yes, our man’s on the wrong side of 30. Yes, he’s got five more years remaining on a sweetheart free-agent deal that presents a $7 million cap hit through the spring of 2029. He also let it be known fall

“It begs the question of trying to get him back,” Weekes said. “You know how he fits in there. There’s no guessing. It’s proven.

“Let’s put it this way: All the boxes are checked. , so you really wouldn’t be spending (irresponsibly). It would just be like, ‘Welcome home, let’s rock.'”

At full tilt and full health, the Avs are rolling out the best hockey team on the planet. But without alternative options, it feels as if this story will go as Nuke goes — for better or for worse. When Nichushkin was indefensible during the magic carpet ride of 2022, Lord Stanley came home. When he became invisible this past April, so did they.

“The organization is pulling for (Nichushkin), the fans are are pulling for him,” Weekes stressed. “Everybody knows what he means to the group, what he means to the club, let’s make no mistake about it. But from a team standpoint, for (the Avs), they’ve got to be real.

“They have to be very open-minded all the way around. They’d better be very exhaustive in how they go through their process on it — which I’m sure they are, knowing Joe (Sakic) and (McFarland) and the organization.”

You don’t think Naz wouldn’t waive his clause for one more ride with Nate & The Boys? Windows don’t stay open forever. And some demons never rest.

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“I mean, I think (there’s) kind of been kind of like a breaking point (among goaltender salaries),” the Avs’ 32-year-old Czech goaltender said in advance of Colorado’s season-opener against Chicago on Wednesday night at Ball Arena.

The right-handed-catching cult favorite — “FRANKIE! FRANKIE!” — on Chopper Circle has a 36-12 record over his past 55 regular-season appearances in an Avs sweater, with a .921 save percentage. In his last 10 postseason showings, seven of which came last spring during Colorado’s Stanley Cup championship run, he’s posted a 7-2 record, 6-0 in May/June of 2022.

But, Frankie is tied for the 45th-highest cap hit among NHL goalies, at $2.0 million, according to Spotrac.  And the man he’ll be sharing time in the crease with, new Avs goalie Alexandar Georgiev, is No. 33, at $3.4 million.

“I don’t think you’re going to see contracts like (Florida’s Sergei) Bobrovsky or what a (Andrei) Vasilevskiy (of Tampa Bay) has,” Francouz said. “I think the team is going to spend more money on the (skaters) and trying to be as effective (as possible) in front of the goalie. But, you know, the trends are changing all the time. It could be long-term or short-term. Who knows?”

Bobrovsky is slated to be a $10-million cap hit for the Panthers this season; Vasilevskiy, whose postseason heroics had led the Lightning to consecutive Cup titles before he ran into the Avs’ buzzsaw this past spring, is on track for $9.5 million.

Colorado, meanwhile, will defend its Stanley Cup championship with only $5.4 million, or 6.77% of its opening night cap space, devoted to the goaltending position. The Avs’ cap percentage dedicated to goalies ranks 25th out of 32 NHL squads.

Avalanche general manager Chris MacFarland and president of hockey operations Joe Sakic aren’t trying to reinvent the wheel, at least where Cup contenders are concerned. But they are setting their own market when it comes to the brakes — as in, cap money devoted to the goaltending position.

And hockey observers are eager to see how well the pads — brake pads and goalie pads — will hold up for a franchise that����ap raising a banner Wednesday night and is favored to do so a year from now, too.

“I’m very curious to see if those guys can hold the fort (in the crease),” Turner Sports hockey analyst and former Avs assistant coach Rick Tocchet said. “Even as good as the Avs are, I think there’s a little bit of a chink in the armor (there) … and I don’t know if you can do a 1A and 1B. I don’t think you can play (both) those guys. I think somebody’s got to take the reins.”

“You don’t need anything spectacular”

The Avs stuck it to the league by sticking to their formula. Basically, if you’re so busy defending your own zone, you’re not going to have enough time — or the energy — to pepper the last line of defense in our zone.

To wit: Colorado ranked fourth among NHL rosters in shots taken per game (35.0) during the ’21-’22 regular season, but just 14th in shots allowed (32.0).

That gap was even more pronounced during the franchise’s dominant Cup run, as the Avs averaged 39.1 shots (No. 3 out of 16 playoff teams) and allowed just 27.9 per game (No. 1).

“The defense is amazing here,” said Georgiev, the lithe Bulgarian-born stopper who was acquired via a trade from the Rangers this past July 7, then signed to a three-year contract shortly thereafter. “I’m grateful to have the chance to play behind these guys.”

After spending the past two years as the backup to Igor Shesterkin, the 26-year-old Georgiev knows he’s jumping onto a moving train along the Front Range. A train with championship expectations.

“I knew I was getting moved,” said the new Avs netminder, who put up a 58-48-11 record with 2.94 goals against average and a .908 save percentage in 129 games with the Rangers. “And (I’m) super excited that this is the team I landed on and that they have confidence in me and (that) I really wanted to be here as well. It’s been the perfect mix.”

The Avs have gone down the “backup-who-could-be-a-No.-1” route before, trading a second-round draft pick for Washington goaltender Philipp Grubauer and Brooks Orpik in June 2018. Grubauer was 66-30-10 in 113 regular-season appearances with the Avs, posting a 2.38 GAA and finished third in the Vezina Trophy voting in 2021, but couldn’t help get the Avs past the second round of the playoffs.

“When you have the high-flying offensive goal support that Colorado has, I think you just need solid goaltending,” Turner Sports hockey analyst Paul Bissonnette said. “You don’t need anything spectacular like Vasilevskiy is going to provide, but I definitely think that somebody’s going to have to step up and take that (mantle).

“You can even go over to Washington last year — they had another very similar situation, where I felt that Washington probably played well enough to beat Florida, but they just didn’t have their (No. 1) guy.”

“Trying to get an advantage”

While Avs coach Jared Bednar didn’t hesitate to turn to Francouz in the postseason when Darcy Kuemper was hurt and/or struggling, last year’s championship run began and ended with Kuemper — who signed a five-year, $26.25-million free-agent deal with the Caps in July — as the top option between the pipes.

MacFarland and Sakic are rolling the dice with the notion that Georgiev is ready to do the same, although the rest of the league hasn’t exactly followed the Avs down the rabbit hole.

Spotrac.com’s NHL payroll tracker shows the average percentage of cap room taken up by goaltenders had risen from 8.8% during the ’20-21 regular season to 9.3% at the start of the ’22-23 season. The tracker listed nine teams that had devoted at least 11% of their cap space to the stoppers in the crease, while only four had allocated 6% or less. Two seasons ago, that ratio was at eight teams and five teams, respectively.

“The general managers are trying to figure little details, little changes and trying to get an advantage,” Francouz shrugged. “So it����ap really fun to watch. And I think that’s why we have the salary cap. That makes this league so interesting.”

We will remember 2022 as the year that the Big Three broke the bank.

With MacKinnon signing a contract extension with the Avalanche that makes him the highest-paid player in the NHL, he joins Wilson and Jokic with new megadeals worth more than $600 million combined.

Three superstars who make the Avs, Broncos and Nuggets worth watching are now worth more than a small country. And that’s no exaggeration: $600 million is more than the GNP of Dominica, a beautiful little island in the Caribbean.

Here’s the eye-opening, economic breakdown of the contract extensions, all signed since June, in a summer spending spree like we’ve never seen in this dusty old cowtown:

Jokic: $270 million for five years.

Wilson: $245 million for five years.

MacKinnon: $100.8 million, eight years.

And then there’s outfielder Kris Bryant, who’s not worth a dime, but was signed by the Rockies for $182 million over seven years. Stupid is as stupid does.

At first glance, it appears MacKinnon might’ve picked the wrong sport. His average annual salary of $12.6 million when the new deal hits is dwarfed by the $46 million per annum of Wilson and the mind-boggling $54 million Jokic will be paid.

But want to know the bottom-line truth about all these big bucks?

The cha-ching don’t mean a thing if you don’t get that ring.

While MacKinnon will earn a fraction of the money of the other two, he has by far the best deal in town.

He raised the Stanley Cup before getting paid. And terms of his new contract will give MacK a shot at building a dynasty with the Avs from now right through 2031, when he will be 36.

“Really cool,” MacKinnon said Tuesday at a news conference on the eve of training camp for the defending NHL champs. There was no doubt he was going to get big money. But the real big deal? MacK almost certainly will spend the rest of his NHL career chasing the Cup for the glory of Colorado.

Do I need to remind you the Nuggets have never won the NBA championship?

While Jokic will do his MVP best to write the most glorious chapter in team history, the pro basketball landscape suggests it����ap a longshot anytime before 2028, when I’m guessing Joker will be tempted to return to Serbia and ride one of his beloved horses into the sunset after his deal runs its course.

With the fans of ����apountry growing restless, general manager George Paton boldly made a blockbuster trade with Seattle for Wilson, then made the even bolder wager to pay a 33-year-old quarterback like the elite player the Seahawks no longer believe him to be.

Although it����ap too early to make any conclusive judgment, if the small sample size of two games in a Denver uniform is any indication, Wilson appears to be a welcome upgrade over Teddy Bridgewater and the other forgettable QBs who have passed through town in recent years. But the eye test also suggests Paton made a very expensive leap of faith in the hope Wilson can put Denver on equal footing with Patrick Mahomes or Justin Herbert in the AFC West.

While $100 million can buy an athlete a great big house anywhere in this great big world, it����ap the $800,000 of chump change that makes MacKinnon’s deal so interesting.

The small financial details of his contract allowed MacKinnon to become the highest-paid player in the NHL, barely inching past the $12.5 million per year earned by Edmonton center Connor McDavid.

Here’s the interesting part: Instead of dramatically resetting the market, MacKinnon chose to take less money than he could’ve demanded, in order to give himself the best chance to win the Stanley Cup again and again with defenseman Cale Makar and the boys wearing burgundy and blue sweaters..

“We’re not planning on just winning one,” MacKinnon said.

“Nathan is obviously one of the premier players in the NHL, so a long-term extension was something we wanted to get done before the season started,” Avs general manager Chris McFarland said in a statement released by the team. “He has that rare combination of speed and power with a high compete level that makes him a generational player.”

In another year, Toronto center Auston Matthews will almost certainly take away the honor of being the NHL’s best-paid player from MacKinnon.

And MacK won’t care one red cent.

He’s chasing a far loftier goal, signing a contract for life with Colorado that gives him a real shot at surpassing Joe Sakic and Patrick Roy as the best player in Avalanche history.

It����ap been a hot minute since NHL free agency began July 13. It����ap Day 25 of Kadri Watch. We hold these two truths to be self-evident.

No. 1: From St. Louis to Tampa, Kadri was the emotional heartbeat of the Avs’ road to the franchise’s first championship since 2001. We all owe him eternal thanks for those memories.

No. 2: Although Kadri maybe doesn’t want to hear it, the open market has made it clear: The best year of his career, when Kadri produced a robust 1.23 points per game during the regular season, was an outlier that served to inflate his self worth.

To paraphrase Tampa Bay coach Jon Cooper, the Avalanche has too many men to pay Kadri a salary of anywhere near $8 million.

Nobody, least of all me, can blame Kadri for wanting to get paid top dollar and a full seven-year term as a free agent. But it����ap his age, not a long-standing reputation as a hothead that he worked so diligently to bury, that makes him a poor investment for one day beyond four seasons.

President of hockey operations Joe Sakic did not earn his richly deserved status as the savviest roster architect in the league by overpaying for talent. It’s nothing personal, Naz. It����ap the business end of the NHL’s flat salary cap puzzle.

If power forward Valeri Nichushkin is worth an average annual salary of $6.125 million and captain Gabe Landeskog makes $7 million a year, a reasonable price for Kadri should be slotted somewhere between those two core members of the Avalanche.

My assessment: No matter how Avalanche management might be able to juggle its roster to create cap room, whether that involve trading J.T. Compher or Sam Girard, it would be foolish for the team to pay Kadri a penny more than $26 million over the course of four years to remain in Colorado.

Sakic learned from the late, great Pierre Lacroix that sentimentality can’t override a commitment to the team’s salary structure.

With this new contract, I get why Kadri wants to earn top dollar, maximize the term of the deal and play for a legit championship contender. These 25 days have revealed it will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to check all three boxes on his wish list.

Kadri is certainly entitled to take all the time he wants to land the best possible deal, whether it����ap with the New York Islanders, Calgary Flames or any other team in the league.

Colorado should operate on its own terms, rather than be beholden to outside market forces.

Isn’t it about time the Avs wish Kadri good luck and move on?

Colorado doesn’t need Kadri to repeat as champion, but the Avs do need a viable No. 2 center to give themselves the best chance to hoist the Cup again in 2023.

The same never-panic patience Sakic has demonstrated in building a championship roster should give him the confidence to believe he doesn’t have to resolve this issue before Colorado opens training camp in September. While Compher is rock solid, the more intriguing internal option to replace Kadri is Alex Newhook, a 21-year-old who has only begun to tap his potential.

It’s also conceivable the Avs could look outside their organization for a veteran center.

Our old buddy Paul Stastny is patiently watching how the market shakes out, looking to sign with a contender to make one more run at the Cup. At age 36, Stastny is no longer the skater we fondly remember wearing a sweater for the University of Denver Pioneers or the Avalanche.

Stastny, however, is the same great team-first guy he has always been. His 21 goals and 24 assists for Winnipeg last season indicate there’s still real skill in Stastny’s stick. On a one-year deal with the Avalanche somewhere between $1 million-$2 million, he could adapt to any role to compliment Compher and Newhook.

If Sakic and new general manager Chris McFarland are willing to play the long game, they might be able to pry Jonathan Toews away from the rebuilding Chicago Blackhawks sometime before the trade deadline this upcoming season.

Toews led the Blackhawks to three championships. He’s 34 years old. On the decline. With a hefty current cap hit of $10.5 million. But should Chicago be willing to swallow half of Toews’ salary, the Avs could find a way to acquire a proven leader and winner.

Colorado has work to do on the roster before making its next playoff run.

On Day 25 of the Kadri Watch, however, maybe it����ap time for team management and Avs fans alike to take a new approach.

Hey, Naz. Thanks for everything. Happy trails. Write when you find work.