The Avalanche announced the last of their transactions this morning as they cut their roster down to the required limit.

Instead of actually getting to 23, the Avalanche will open with a 21-man roster after they sent defenseman Justin Barron and forward Mikhail Maltsev to the Colorado Eagles.

Defenseman Jacob MacDonald was placed on waivers yesterday and cleared. He is expected to be sent to the Eagles as well.

Defenseman Devon Toews was placed on season-opening injured reserve, which functions the same as normal injured reserve but because Toews came to training camp already injured, he goes on SOIR instead of normal IR.

If practice lines and pairings are any indication (and they usually are), the expected opening-night lineup against Chicago appears to be:

Landeskog – MacKinnon – Rantanen
Nichushkin – Kadri – Burakovsky
Helm – Jost – O’Connor
Ranta – Newhook – Compher

Girard – Makar
Byram – E. Johnson
Murray – J. Johnson
MacDermid (healthy scratch)

Kuemper
Johansson

For anyone curious, this lineup leaves the Avalanche with ~$1.38M in salary cap space to start the year. Carrying a 12F/7D/2G alignment is saving them from being further pressed to the cap and will allow them to save more money based on the daily cap system.

The more they are able to cut corners and save now, the more money will be available to them come, say, the trade deadline when they may want to look to acquire a player or two to help the Stanley Cup chase.

I will also note in the above lineup that just because the Jost line is listed as third doesn’t necessarily mean it will actually be the third line. Right now I would say that’s more likely to be two fourth lines and the coaching staff will see which of the lines is playing better in the game and assign those minutes accordingly.

With three rookies in the lineup, I would suggest not getting too comfortable with any of this because these things are subject to change but it is interesting they went with the youth movement right out of the gate.