Avalanche opening night roster and lineup finalized

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

Girard
Makar
Johnson
Toews
Graves
Cole
Timmins

2 goaltenders

Grubauer
Francouz

The taxi squad consists of six players, five skaters and one goaltender.

Skaters

O’Connor
Kaut
Bowers
Sherwood
Gilbert

Goaltender

Miska

This current setup leaves the Avs with just about $899K in salary cap space.

But where is Bowen Byram?

Great question! Byram is currently in quarantine until Saturday. Officially, he is in the AHL until such time as the Avs bring him up and add him to the taxi squad and, eventually, the active roster.

Byram is only allowed to be placed in the AHL until the WHL season gets underway, at which time the CHL-NHL agreement preventing players (including Byram) from graduating to the AHL before their 20th birthday kicks back in.

It won’t be an issue, however, as Byram gets out of quarantine on Saturday and is expected to travel to California for the team’s first road trip of the season.

Opening Night Lineup

With Erik Johnson out after testing positive for COVID-19, Conor Timmins slides into the lineup tonight against the St. Louis Blues. Here is your lineup for the first game of the season:

Burakovsky-MacKinnon-Rantanen
Landeskog-Kadri-Saad
Nichushkin-Compher-Donskoi
Calvert-Bellemare-Jost

Toews-Makar
Girard-Timmins
Graves-Cole

Grubauer