The way winning always papers over flaws is one of the more charming aspects of sports to me. When the outcome is what you set out to achieve, how you got there ends up being a justified journey, even if it wasn’t perfect. See Tuesday night’s win against Los Angeles as a good example of that for the Avalanche. They…...

There are a lot of things you can point to in order to make a case for this year’s Colorado Avalanche team as a Stanley Cup contender. Certainly their last game, an 8-0 blowout of the St. Louis Blues, is the kind of thing that gets people’s attention but for me it’s more about nights like tonight. The truth is…...

It’s been a wild 24 hours for Greg Pateryn, who woke up this morning with news from the league that he was being fined $5,000 for a cross-checking incident in last night’s game against the Anaheim Ducks. Now, Pateryn is riding the Avs team bus solo from Anaheim to Los Angeles as he and Ian Cole are swapping spots after…...

The Avalanche made it through two whole games before the injury woes of last year began to descend upon them again. With what sounds like very minor injuries for the moment to Pavel Francouz and Andre Burakovsky, the lineup tonight against the Los Angeles Kings is getting some tweaks. With Burakovsky out, the team is running 11 forwards and seven…...

Both Bowen Byram and Erik Johnson practiced with the team for the first time this season, kicking off speculation of when either might get into the lineup. As the Avs head to California for a four-game road trip, the lineup on defense is a major focus as Johnson is a proven regular and Byram is arguably the best defenseman in…...

One of the (many) things I love about sports is the obvious opportunity for redemption. Have a bad game where you get embarrassed on home ice against a longtime rival? When you play two days later against the same opponent, you can throw it in the bin and get it back. Sometimes it works, sometimes the other team is just…...

Colorado’s first game of the season didn’t go very well as they looked out of sync and lethargic in a 4-1 loss to the St. Louis Blues. With the baseball-style series implemented for this season, the Avs will have a chance for revenge tonight at Ball Arena. There wasn’t a lot to come out of morning skate as the same…...

“Too many guys not doing enough.” That’s how Avalanche head coach finished his press conference following Colorado’s season-opening 4-1 loss to the St. Louis Blues. To be honest, that could have been the first and only thing he said and it would’ve been completely appropriate. Coming into the season as one of the darlings of the NHL and as a…...

The Avalanche finalized their opening night roster yesterday and officially announced it today. Because of salary cap restrictions, they are not utilizing the full 23-player allotment, instead going with 21 players but using a full six-player taxi squad. The breakdown of the roster is: 12 forwards Burakovsky MacKinnon Rantanen Saad Kadri Landeskog Nichushkin Compher Donskoi Jost Bellemare Calvert 7 defensemen…...

When the Colorado Avalanche released their training camp roster on Saturday, there were very few surprises. No PTOs, no deals signed we hadn’t heard about, no shenanigans of any sort. Yet, at the very top sporting the new number four was Bowen Byram. Given he’s arguably the best defenseman in the world not currently in the NHL, it wasn’t a…...

Happy New Year! According to Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman, the Avalanche are one of four teams that will participate in a unique two-game set of outdoor games in Lake Tahoe, Nevada. Boston, Philadelphia and Colorado’s opponent, Vegas, will play in a two-day, two-game set at the Edgewood Tahoe Resort as part of an experimental “Outdoor Weekend” experience for the league. The…...

I’ve always enjoyed the end of the year. I like easily digestible moments in time where one era ends and another begins. Some eras, like the golden age Avs or the Matt Duchene era, take time to play out, but every 12 months we get to push reset on the clock and start fresh. Maybe no year will be as…...

When the NHL announced it had reached an agreement with the players on a plan for the upcoming season, one of the most intriguing details to emerge from the talks was the creation of a “taxi squad.” After watching MLB successfully use this concept to help make up for the lack of minor league play, the NHL has decided to…...

While the NHL and NHLPA still have to hold their votes to officially approve the details of the upcoming season, an agreement is in place between the two sides to get the next NHL season started (Note: Both sides voted to approve). Through various social media sites and announcements, we’ve seen players from all over the world coming back to…...

The World Junior Championships kick off next week on Christmas Day, the first meaningful competitive hockey most of us will get to enjoy since the end of the Stanley Cup Finals in late September. While the NHL and NHLPA continue working their way through the complicated details of the upcoming season, the hockey world gets to kick back and for…...

In an offseason that seems set to never end given the league’s owners current position of trying to take even more money from the players, we’re digging deeper into the bag of tricks that we in the biz call “content.” Today, we’re taking a look at one of the most-requested topics from readers: the expansion draft, how it works, and…...

Regardless of whether the NHL has a season or not in the first half of 2021, the Seattle expansion draft is still expected to take place as planned in the summer. With that, we’re doing a series of articles here to dig into expansion a little bit. Tomorrow we’ll have a piece up about how Colorado is positioned for the…...

When a team brings in new players, there are always questions about how they’ll fit into their new organization. They’re living in a new city, playing in a different system with different teammates and adjusting to a completely different culture. That said, Colorado’s offseason was relatively quiet in that there wasn’t significant player movement in or out. As a championship…...

It’s good to be Devon Toews these days. In the last three months, he’s competed for the New York Islanders in the eastern conference finals, gotten married, gotten traded to a different Stanley Cup contender on his honeymoon and then finished off his run by securing financial security for himself and his new family when he agreed to a four-year…...