So, uh, that was eventful. The Colorado Avalanche wrapped up their trading portion of the regular season with their ninth and tenth trades of the year as they finished the drastic makeover of the roster that has taken place this year.

Following last night’s blockbuster trade for Brock Nelson, the Avs walked into today armed with a determination that they needed to keep leveling up in order to handle division foes Winnipeg and Dallas.

Well, I’d say mission accomplished. Colorado ended the day with two more deals that certainly made them quite a bit different from what they were 48 hours ago.

The Nelson deal opened the door for more

I wrote last night that the deal for Nelson gave the Avs a new second-line center and gave them options with Casey Mittelstadt. I had been hearing rumbles that they were going to try to move him once they landed the center they wanted for the stretch run.

That center turned out to be Nelson, who was atop Colorado’s wish list the entire run-up to the trade deadline. The Avs ended up in a bidding war with the Jets, who like the Avs were back in the market for a 2C for the second straight season, and the winner of this one was going to get a decided advantage in a potential postseason rematch.

The Avs felt comfortable giving up arguably their top prospect in Cal Ritchie and a future first-round pick for Nelson, who is already 33 years old and is expected to be one of the top free agents this summer. Retaining him will be tough for the Avs, but they decided that was tomorrow’s problem.

Their payment for kicking that can down the road is a significant upgrade to the center spot directly behind Nathan MacKinnon and they accomplished a secondary goal of keeping him out of Winnipeg in the process. That’s a win-win for the Avs and we’ll see if their high-stakes poker bet on trying to win the Stanley Cup this year pays off.

Here’s Nelson after today’s practice:

What came next was a decision on Mittelstadt’s future.

Mittelstadt’s tenure ends a year after it began

It started promisingly with Mittelstadt looking like an electric playmaker in Colorado’s system. He played well during the playoffs and then had a blistering start to the season with 18 points in 19 games.

It all went south as Mittelstadt became the biggest weakness on the roster once general manager Chris MacFarland addressed the horrible goaltending from the first two months of the season. Colorado’s lack of depth scoring has been an issue all year and it would be wildly unfair to lay that solely at the feet of Mittelstadt thanks to the constant injury issues, but he was not the facilitator he had been the last two years in Buffalo or even during the beginning of his time in Denver.

He was a passenger on far too many nights. Instead of driving a line, he was just along for the ride, a true cardio king more nights than not.

As the season wore on, it became obvious that if the Avs wanted a deep run they had two options: Hope Mittelstadt magically found his game, or make a move to improve at that spot. The Nelson trade meant the Avs chose the latter but had to figure out what came next for Mittelstadt.

I heard all kinds of interesting rumors, including that the Avs were deep into talks with the New Jersey Devils in a deal that would have brought young defenseman Simon Nemec in return, but neither side could find a deal they liked.

In the end, Mittelstadt ended the day a member of the Boston Bruins. The full deal came out to:

COLORADO GETS:

• Forward Charlie Coyle
• 2026 5th round pick

BOSTON GETS:

• Mittelstadt
• Forward Will Zellers
• 2025 2nd round pick (lower of the pick between Carolina and New York Rangers)

Zellers was drafted last summer and was having a huge season in the USHL as one of the league’s leading goal-scorers. Mittelstadt will have a chance to regain his form in Boston, which has struggled thanks in large part to their lackluster center play.

Coyle comes in as a 33-year-old center who is signed for another year at $5.3M AAV. He has been a primary culprit of those Bruins center struggles as he’s played most of this year at right wing. He has just 22 points in 64 games, but 15 of those are goals.

Throughout his career, Coyle has been a quality goal-scoring threat as he has shifted between center and wing as needed. Last year was the best season of his career with a 60-point season that also saw him score 25 goals.

That was clearly an anomaly, but at 6’3″ and 220 pounds, he brings a size and physicality component to Colorado’s center depth that was needed.

While Parker Kelly has done an admirable job of moonlighting as Colorado’s fourth-line center, Coyle’s addition gives the Avs the flexibility to either run a center depth of

MacKinnon
Nelson
Coyle
Jack Drury

That center alignment would be one of the best in the NHL and absolutely goes pound-for-pound with what Winnipeg and Dallas have to offer down the middle.

If the Avs wanted to load up their top-nine forwards a little more, they could shift Coyle to the right wing alongside Drury instead and keep Kelly at center.

So, to compare these forward alignments, here’s Coyle at center:

Lehkonen – MacKinnon – Necas
Nichushkin – Nelson – Drouin
Colton – Coyle – Kiviranta?
Kelly/Wood/Vesey – Drury – O’Connor

If the Avs wanted to use Coyle as a wing, it could look something like this:

Lehkonen – MacKinnon – Necas
Nichushkin – Nelson – Drouin
Colton – Drury – Coyle
Wood/Vesey – Kelly – O’Connor

Which one of those do you like more? I’m not sure which I prefer but given the acquisition cost of Coyle, I’d like to see how it goes with Coyle at center first. Either way, the Avs made themselves a lot heavier and harder to play against with this deal.

A hero’s return

The other move the Avs made today was to trade forward Givani Smith to the Philadelphia Flyers in exchange for defenseman Erik Johnson.

Look, this piece is behind a paywall so if you’re paying to read this story, I’m going to assume you are comfortable with who Erik Johnson is so I won’t go into the lore here. Suffice it to say, the guys who won a Stanley Cup alongside Johnson back in 2022 were very excited.

I mean, Nathan MacKinnon doesn’t like almost anybody and this was MacKinnon and Johnson right after the final buzzer of the Cup-clinching game:

So, you know, this one meant a lot to the guys still here from that team. Given it was only three years ago, it’s a shockingly low number of guys, but still.

Smith was a throw-in to the Mackenzie Blackwood trade from earlier this season and has been in Loveland with the Colorado Eagles for a while now. The acquisition cost is not anything that will raise any eyebrows and will become a fun trivia question someday.

As a player, Johnson is at the end of the line here. He’s not a consistently effective depth defenseman anymore, but he is a consistently effective teammate. First and foremost, EJ is back in Denver to be the Ambassador of Good Vibes.

It’s one last Flight of the Condor.

Deadline wrap-up

Let’s just do this quick and dirty with a rundown of assets in and out. Over the last week, the Avs have traded:

• 2026 or 2027 1st round pick (COL)
• 2025 2nd round pick (NYR)
• 2025 2nd round pick (CAR)
• 2025 4th round pick (COL)
• 2028 3rd round pick (COL) (If Avs win the Stanley Cup and Nelson plays 50% of games)
• F Casey Mittelstadt
• F Juuso Parssinen
• D Calvin de Haan
• D Oliver Kylington
• F Cal Ritchie
• F Will Zellers

In return, the Avs got:

• F Brock Nelson
• F Charlie Coyle
• F Jimmy Vesey
• D Ryan Lindgren
• D Erik Johnson
• F William Dufour
• D Hank Kempf (unsigned)
• 2026 5th round pick (BOS)

The Avs system was already very thin on picks and prospects and the Avs dug deeper into that well over the last six days at the cost of adding all of those guys to the organization.

If you want to hear from MacFarland himself, here’s his post-deadline presser in full:

Fun fact: Today continued Colorado’s streak of making a deal every single trade deadline since 2002, the longest current active streak in the league. I have no idea who is second.