During Colorado’s long wait between games two and three, the seasons managed to change from fall to winter and back to fall. Colorado, eh? As the Avs sat around waiting for their next victim, the NHL continued on. In Vancouver last night, highly-touted defenseman Quinn Hughes finally scored his first NHL goal in his eighth NHL game. The Canucks announcers…...

Gabriel Landeskog – A Landeskog is already on the familiar PPG pace he set last season. Tonight, he got the game-winner by standing backdoor and letting Rantanen find him with a great pass. That top line has picked up where it left off last year. Nathan MacKinnon – A- Kind of? MacKinnon had two assists but seemed a little more…...

Nathan MacKinnon is a superstar. Mikko Rantanen is right behind him. The world seemingly expects Cale Makar to cure cancer in between shifts. It can be easy to forget the steady presence of Gabe Landeskog, who plays third banana on the league’s most dominant top line. It’s a new year but the same old captain for the Avalanche as he…...

The Avalanche are riding pretty high after winning their season-opener 5-3 over the Calgary Flames. Below is postgame audio from a club that believes it has big things ahead of it. Conor Timmins on his NHL debut: Mikko Rantanen on his two-goal night: Cale Makar: Joonas Donskoi:...

Preseason nothin’. As Colorado got off to the kind of start it wanted with a 5-3 win over the Calgary Flames, it was the player who did not play for the Avalanche in the preseason that drove the bus. Mikko Rantanen, who agreed to a six-year contract during Colorado’s final preseason game last weekend, reminded everyone except a couple of nerd…...

The Avalanche knows what’s coming. They remember how they felt playing Nashville the first time last year. The sting of a playoff loss carries one through the summer. Instead of facing the team that eliminated them, Colorado is on the other side of the coin as they welcome in the Calgary Flames for their season-opening game. “There’s gonna be some…...

The nightmare for Avalanche fans is over. Mikko Rantanen has agreed to a six-year contract worth $55.5 million in total, $9.25M per year. The contract ensures Colorado gets a very fair price on their star right wing through the bulk of his prime as it is set to expire when he is 28. The 22-year-old Rantanen is coming off maybe…...

It was only a mild surprise when the Avalanche sent Bowen Byram back to the WHL for the season. After drafting him fourth overall, general manager Joe Sakic said Byram would get every opportunity to stick. That Byram played in two of three games in Irvine in the Anaheim Rookie Faceoff and then four of Colorado’s first five preseason games…...

And just like that, there was hope. As the Mikko Rantanen contract stalemate has continued, there have been more moments of disappointment than optimism. Until now. Speaking to Swiss television station Teleticino reporter Nicola Martinetti on behalf of DNVR, Rantanen opened up on topics ranging from his time in Switzerland to the Avalanche and, yes, his contract situation. “I feel…

Following a stretch of four preseason games in six days, the Avalanche entered a prolonged stretch of inactivity where they play just two in ten. One of those two came tonight as Colorado played the fifth of their six preseason games with tonight’s contest in Vegas to take on the Golden Knights. With a prospect-laden lineup against a grip of…...

This whole thing sucks. For the first time many years, the Avalanche are entering the season with high expectations that are realistic and not built off the back of a flukey team that rode crazy good fortune into an early playoff exit. Colorado was aggressive over the summer in addressing their most obvious needs and taking some chances on players…

It’s safe to say expectations are high for Cale Makar. It’s also safe to say he doesn’t care all that much about them. The Avalanche have been lucky enough to see many incredible forwards come through town since 1995 but the high-end defenders have been harder for the organization to find. There have been brief tenures of guys like Rob…...

It hasn’t quite been the preseason the Avalanche were hoping for in terms of results as they lost their third straight to open their preseason schedule. A 4-3 loss to the Minnesota Wild today in Minneapolis was another of those classic battles between roster disparity as the home team iced a mostly-NHL lineup and the Avalanche sent a mixture of…...

Getting traded is a weird experience. Players always describe it as a whirlwind, one that includes upheaval of your daily life and where you call home. For Calle Rosen, the shock came in the middle of the night, a three AM phone call that woke him from slumber and kept him awake the rest of the night. Colorado? The Avalanche?…...

When Bowen Byram made his unofficial Avalanche debut in the first game of the Anaheim Rookie Faceoff, it all seemed so easy for him. He registered two assists and generally dominated most of his shifts in a breezy 5-2 win over Vegas. Everyone more or less had the same thoughts following that performance – that sure looked easy. Things got…...

The final day of training camp for the Colorado Avalanche wrapped up today as the Avs took to the ice to work predominantly on special teams work. Each session was broken into PP/PK units and boy were there some interesting looks. Colorado has more intriguing PP QBs than at any other time that I could recall. Today they had…...

After two days of mostly systems installation work, the Avalanche got into some real competitive situations today with small-team scrimmages. The two sessions ran as normal so the scrimmages weren’t too deep with each team only having a couple defensive pairings and lines each but it provided some of the younger guys real opportunities to shine against NHL competition.…...

The second day of Avalanche training camp saw some players really begin to separate themselves in the battle for opening night third pairing. With Ian Cole still expected out until December and the expected top four to be some combination of Cale Makar, Sam Girard, Erik Johnson and Nikita Zadorov, there could be up to four jobs in play…...

It was an early morning at the rink today as the Avalanche kicked off their training camp with an invigorating 30 minutes of goaltender drills. The large crowd on hand was treated to extremely technical work with goalies Philipp Grubauer and Hunter Miska before any other skaters took the ice. Once the sessions were actually off and running, however, the…...