The Colorado Avalanche has two key components to roster building that have been missing for the past three offseasons: Clarity on a couple of integral players and salary cap flexibility.
Colorado has about $9.7 million in cap space now after trading Charlie Coyle and Miles Wood on Friday to the Columbus Blue Jackets. There are 4-6 open roster spots, but also internal candidates to fill some of those depth roles.
The Avs have more clarity on captain Gabe Landeskog’s future and don’t have an offseason filled with questions about Valeri Nichushkin. There is an opportunity for the Avs to do something very different than the previous few years, if they want.
Colorado could be patient when the free-agent frenzy starts this Tuesday at 10 a.m. Instead of grabbing the best players available right now who can fit into the cap space available, the Avalanche could wait.
By doing so, the Avs could begin the season without being at or over the salary cap for the first time in years. When teams are below the cap ceiling, set at $95.5 million for 2025-26, the unused space they have accrues more over the course of the year.
“There’s an opportunity to be a cap accrual team for sure,” Avalanche general manager Chris MacFarland said Saturday after his club made three picks in the 2025 NHL draft. “I don’t know … I think we’ll probably be nestled to (the cap ceiling). I don’t know if we’ll be millions underneath.
“I just think we’re going to see where the value is.”
Each player’s cap hit is calculated on a daily basis, so teams are only responsible for a fraction of a player’s cap hit when he arrives at or near the deadline. For example, if a team has $1 million in cap space on opening night and doesn’t dip further into it throughout the season, said club can actually take on a player with about a $4.5 million cap hit on trade deadline day. Toss in some salary retention by the selling team, and that number grows even more.
The two biggest holes in the lineup right now are a No. 3 center to replace Coyle, and a No. 4/5 defenseman if Ryan Lindgren does not return. The Avs could bring Lindgren back, or spend about half of that cap space on a different defenseman. They could trade for or sign a center and push Jack Drury back down to fourth on the depth chart.
But doing either or both right now will almost certainly mean paying full market rates. Adding players in February instead of the previous July has its pros and cons.
Getting the guy you want before the season gives him a full year to settle in with the team and get used to the system, and the coaching staff has more time to figure out the best ways to deploy him. Adding a true No. 3 center and/or No. 4/5 defenseman in July also should lead to more points in the NHL standings, given the roster is more complete for all 82 games.
But the math is pretty simple: Players cost less against the cap in February, so there’s more bang for the buck. And the Avs remain a team that is more concerned with how good the roster is on April 15 than Oct. 15.
That’s how the Avs ended up with a $100 million roster last year. Landeskog was on LTIR all year, and Colorado got the Rangers and Islanders to retain part of the cap hits for Lindgren and Brock Nelson.
Colorado couldn’t afford Lindgren and Nelson in July 2024. The Florida Panthers couldn’t afford Brad Marchand then, either.
The Avs do still need to add some players in the coming days or weeks. But the best path forward might be to wait out the shopping spree conditions on the first couple days of free agency and see what’s left in the bargain aisle.
Colorado has a strong roster right now. The improved clarity on Landeskog and Nichushkin is a big part of that. This Avs roster, plus a few more players on cheap-ish contracts and internal promotions, is plenty good enough to be a comfortable playoff team, barring some catastrophic injury luck.
“I think we feel really good about it,” MacFarland said. “Obviously, the expectations are the expectations. If it’s ‘(Stanley) Cup or bust,’ there’s only one team that wins the Cup every year. But this is a good hockey team.”
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It’s one of the options that MacFarland and his staff haven’t had available to them in recent years.
“We’re going to look at all options,” MacFarland said. “It may not be free agency. Maybe a trade is the better way to go.
“I think we’ve got to look to add at forward and on the back end. We’ll look at every avenue possible over the next, whether it’s the next few days or weeks, or months, until we find the right fits.”
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