The Colorado Avalanche, who were arguably the favorite to win the Stanley Cup, fell short to the Vegas Golden Knights losing four games to two. The Avalanche steam rolled the St. Louis Blues, being the first team to advance to the second round. One thing that always comes to mind with teams that win fast and easy in the first round is how much does the time off affect them? In this case, it didn’t. Colorado jumped at Vegas right out of the gate, taking the first two games of the series. What caused the tide to turn? The teams were tied at one after two in game three, Vegas rallied in the third and the game winning goal came off a Max Pacioretty deflection with under five minutes to go.
The momentum from that goal would carry into game four. After going down early in the game, Jonathan Marchessault put up a hat trick with help from Pacioretty and Brown to tie the series up with a decisive 5-1 win. An overtime win in game five and another decisive win in game six solidified the series and Vegas would advance. This second round exit is a tough pill to swallow for Colorado, even tougher when you consider that it shouldn’t diminish their efforts. This team was really freaking good, I mean they were the best team in these playoffs, unfortunately for them the best team doesn't always have what it takes.
What went wrong? Nothing really. Colorado got a tough break having to take on Vegas in the second round because for as strong a team Colorado is, Vegas is right there with them. Granted that shouldn’t matter, if you’re going to be a cup contending team you need to be able to take on anybody therefore, Colorado needed to come out on top. So where do they go from here? Colorado very well could be right back in this position next season and win the whole darn thing. We talk about how many years the Capitals and Lightning were supposed to win the cup but didn’t until after they were “supposed to”, was that what this was for Colorado?
Joe Sakic is really going to have his hands full once the off season officially starts as the Avalanche are on the brink of having some really big holes in their lineup. Their list of upcoming UFA’s includes their captain in Gabriel Landeskog, both of their goalies in Devan Dubnyk and Philipp Grubauer, the latter being a candidate for the Vezina Trophy, as well as Brandon Saad, Patrik Nemeth, Carl Soderberg, Pierre-Edourd Bellemare and a few other depth guys. On top of that, Cale Makar, Connor Timmins and Tyson Jost will all be RFA’s in need of new contracts, one of which being a Norris Trophy Candidate will certainly cost a pretty penny.
Cale Makar alone is probably going to cost almost half of the cap space the Avalanche will have available for next season. That’s going to cause problems as that will likely leave you with about $11 million to spend on a starting goalie and the voids left by Gabriel Landeskog and two time Stanley Cup winner Brandon Saad. It’s not unreasonable to think that that remaining $11 million could pretty much go to Jost and Timmins alone and use the remaining $3 million on whatever free agents you can scrounge up at a low price.
It’s really hard to imagine Landeskog playing for any other team but it seems highly unlikely that the Avalanche will be able to keep him around unless he wants to take a huge discount. He’s coming off a seven year $5.5 million deal where he has been the captain of this team for all of that time. The 28 year power forward will without question be one of the most sought after players assuming he hits free agency and part of why it’s tough to see him returning to Colorado is he can probably collect a seven for seven type of deal elsewhere if not for more money. The Philipp Grubauer situation will certainly be interesting, it’s not often a pending UFA is up for Vezina and he’s really only proven to be elite within the last couple seasons since coming to Colorado. Will Sakic look to crunch the numbers and try to extend him or will they look to replace him with a cheaper option in free agency?
It’s going to be a very interesting off season in Colorado, you have to think they might look to make some moves to open up cap space but regardless, the budget is going to be tight. If they’re unable to bring Landeskog back the obvious solution is to give Nathan MacKinnon the “C” on the leadership front. I'm not going to be totally confident in Colorado going forward until they solidify their goaltending situation but assuming they can take care of that, they are going to continue to be a great hockey club going forward. In addition to the solid group the Avs have, they have some young guys in the system that may crack the roster next season and really give this group the edge to get back in the contending discussion.
Chris Feldman
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