At some point, the Colorado Avalanche is going to need to do more to improve the club’s pool of prospects.
It’s just not likely to be this weekend at the 2025 NHL draft, unless general manager Chris MacFarland has a trade or two up his sleeves. The Avs currently have only two picks in this draft — No. 118 in the fourth round and No. 214 in round seven.
“The Avs’ pool might be the weakest in the NHL today,” Scott Wheeler, a staff writer who covers prospects and the draft for The Athletic, said. “They’ve either dealt their picks or their top prospects and the little that’s left will do more than nibble at the edges.”
There’s no secrecy about how the Avalanche reached this point. Colorado has been in win-now mode for years. A shallow collection of prospects is the cost of doing business as a perennial Stanley Cup contender — either by trading draft picks or using them and then dealing the prospects they produce.
The Avs have certainly emptied the cupboard over the past several seasons. Those trades helped the franchise win the Stanley Cup in 2022. It’s helped MacFarland load up at the deadline each of the past two seasons.
Just this past season alone, the Avs traded away top prospect Calum Ritchie, a 2024 pick in the midst of a breakout seasons (William Zellers), and six selections in the first three rounds of future drafts.
“I think for the Avs system, the way to define it is that there are players, but there probably aren’t a ton of impact players,” Chris Peters, content manager and draft/prospects analyst at FloHockey, said. “I think there are players within the mix that will very likely play games, but there aren’t many, if any game-breakers.
“The lack of a high-end player does make it one of the least exciting pools in the league, but this is the nature of most teams in win-now mode with legitimate Stanley Cup aspirations. Long-term it does make things harder in terms of building up the next wave as we’ve seen in Pittsburgh of late. Considering how long it took before the Penguins got to this stage though, I think most teams would be comfortable with that.”
Not only are the Avs short on prospects with impact potential, they don’t currently own a pick in the first three rounds of either the 2025 or 2026 NHL draft. It could put them at a deficit when trying to make more win-now trades in the near future, so it is possible that Colorado could make a move or two in the coming weeks to recoup some draft capital to give the Avs more moveable assets at the deadline.
Mikhail Gulyayev is the club’s top prospect now with Ritchie gone. The 2021 first-round pick has one more year on his KHL contract before the Avs will try to get him to come to North America.
Goaltender Ilya Nabokov, the club’s top pick in a deep 2024 class, is the No. 2 prospect. He’ll play this season on loan in the KHL and then join the Avs or Colorado Eagles after his season is over.
Beyond those two, it’s a lot of maybes and players will relatively low NHL ceilings.
“I think Nabokov could be a decent backup,” Steven Ellis, associate editor and prospects analyst for Daily Faceoff, said. “Sean Behrens might have enough to be a third-pairing defender. But beyond that, it’s a barren wasteland. I’m not sure there’s another prospect in the system who would have a realistic shot at becoming a full-time NHLer.
“Nikita Prishchepov is intriguing because nobody could have expected a seventh-rounder to play in the NHL the following season but we’ll see if he has any sustained success up there.”
Colorado’s recent history with draft picks after the first round has not helped, but there is some hope with the 2024 class. Zellers, a third-round pick, helped bring Charlie Coyle to Denver. Nabokov could be one of the club’s best second-round selections in 15 years. Prishchepov played 10 NHL games, more than everyone in his class beyond the top two guys in the draft.
Others later in the draft, like University of Denver sophomores-to-be Jake Fisher and Tory Pitner, plus Czechia native Max Curran, could help add a little bit of depth to the Avs’ prospect pool.
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To be clear, this isn’t a major problem in the near future, outside of possibly missing out on a trade target or two if other teams with more young assets and picks outbid them. It is something that Colorado will need to improve, eventually.
“The only guy I think is probably an NHL player is a 5-10 Russian defenseman (Gulyayev) who isn’t even that special offensively,” Corey Pronman, senior prospects writer for The Athletic, said. “Nabokov, Behrens and Curran have a chance, but none of them are top prospects for me.
“(Nathan MacKinnon’s) contract saves their window. They can go external for the next 4-5 years before this catches up with them.”
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