"Be the best player here, and your chance will come": Meet Kevin McDonald, the new leader of the Colorado Eagles

On July 22nd, the Colorado Avalanche announced that Kevin McDonald had joined the organization as the new Assistant General Manager. It came just a little over a week after Joe Sakic was promoted to Executive Vice President/General Manager and Chris MacFarland became the new General Manager.

Chris MacFarland’s ascension to the position of General Manager was not a surprise, and his first task under the new title would certainly challenge him. Could he navigate the Stanley Cup free agency and contract extension fallout of the offseason?

Somewhere in that conversation was the simultaneous reality that a Stanley Cup-caliber team could come at the expense of a few things, one of which being a hit to the organization’s depth chart and its muddied trajectory for prospects as a result.

It’s not hard to see why Andrew Cogliano, Josh Manson, or Artturi Lehkonen made sense on this team – they have the title to show for it, but somewhere in Loveland is an American League team made up of players trying to navigate a rapidly evolved landscape that comes with the cost of Cup. No Justin Barron. No Drew Helleson and the Eagles still have a season to play.

The Colorado Eagles have improved their record every season as an AHL team. Under the leadership of Greg Cronin behind the bench: he finished last season 39-22-4-3 and has remained above 0.500 each year.

Last season was the furthest the Eagles have gone in the Calder Cup playoffs since their AHL inception and their highest divisional finish outside of their second year wherein they finished 2nd (they were unable to play in the Calder Cup playoffs that year due to COVID-19.)

Twelve players had career years in terms of point production per game spanning across the forward group and defenseman. Several of those players also departed the Eagles to pursue other options including leading points producers like Jordan Gross, Dylan Sikura, and Kiefer Sherwood. 

You can imagine how a fringe player on the heels of a breakout year might find it hard to see the path to NHL minutes on a Stanley Cup-defending title team, and you’d be right. Between the three of them, they played 17 NHL games last year.

The Eagles have been on the up-and-up and their parent club won the Stanley Cup with a crop of players who benefited from development in the American League in some shape or form. 

Mikko Rantanen was named the 2016 AHL’s outstanding rookie of the year (it was shared with Frank Vatrano) when he earned 60 points as a 19-year-old for the San Antonio Rampage.

Others include Colorado Eagles alumni Logan O’Connor, Alex Newhook, Bowen Byram, and Pavel Francouz. Players with AHL backgrounds from other organizations include: Devon Toews, Darcy Kuemper, J.T. Compher, Nazem Kadri, Andre Burakovsky, Josh Manson, Darren Helm, Nicolas Aube-Kubel, and Nico Sturm.

On another timeline was the 2018-19 St. Louis Blues team that also won a Stanley Cup with several AHL products. American League graduates are a part of the winning formula for the back-to-back championship Tampa Bay Lightning team as well.

Behind that Cup-winning St. Louis Blues team was an Assistant General Manager whose heavy scouting background helped to usher in and graduate prospects for two decades. His name is Kevin McDonald.

In late July, McDonald checked in at Hilton Head for the AHL’s annual board of governors meeting on Saturday as a member of the St. Louis Blues organization. He would leave as a member of the Colorado Avalanche.

“The NHL has a policy, where when you ask for permission, it’s for a specific job [and you] usually only have a specific length of time,” he said. McDonald explained that it was something like a seven-day window from the time the Avs asked for permission to speak to him and described the week as a whirlwind.

“When they extended the job offer, it made more sense for it to be here in person,” McDonald said. He served the Blues for 21 years and never actually lived in St. Louis – he operated out of Boston. McDonald moved to south Denver for this position.

“That was part of the appeal for me too, to be around everybody on the job. [I’m] still gonna scout [and] be gone, probably half the month, but the half of the month that I’m here, between the Avs and the Eagles, it’s a lot more face-to-face.”

“Everything happened within that window where I actually changed teams officially on Friday. It was a little surreal.” He admitted.

“We’ve been lucky. I’ve been going to Hilton Head for about 20 years – my kids are 21 and 20, so they’ve grown up going there. We walked in there [as] members of the Blues like we had been their whole lives. And then, we left with, ‘All right, we’re starting a new adventure in Colorado, and Mom and Dad are moving.’”

In addition to his title as Assistant General Manager to the Colorado Avalanche, McDonald will serve as the General Manager of the Colorado Eagles. McDonald received the 2022 Thomas Ebright Memorial Award for outstanding career contributions to the American Hockey League. 

He began with the New York Rangers in the communications department and rose through the ranks as a professional scout with the St. Louis Blues in 2001 before quickly ascending to the Director of Professional Scouting within two seasons. He became the General Manager of their AHL affiliate and on to the Assistant General Manager position in 2009 – continuing to scout throughout it all.

He’s building his familiarity with Colorado’s prospect pool too. Even though St. Louis and Colorado are Central Division teams, most of McDonald’s scouting was focused out East. When asked if anybody jumped off the page at him here yet, he gave two notable names.

“That’s the exciting part about the American League,” he started. “You have guys like [Daniil] Zhuravlyov who’s brand new to the country, the language, the league, [and] we’re getting his timeline going. Then you have guys like [Justus] Annunen who came in and was one of the rookie leaders in minutes last year and he’s looking to build.” 

“We’re lucky we have so many different forwards that are all vying to get up to the Colorado Avalanche as quickly as possible,” he added. “There is a lot of opportunity in the NHL right now.”

An asset to the Colorado organization as a whole is the strong relationships built among the personnel.

“The hockey world is a small world, so you always have connections with it,” McDonald said. “Jared [Bednar] coached for me in Peoria, Ray Bennett was part of the Blues coaching staff when I was there, [and] I’ve known Chris [MacFarland] from being in the field for 20 to 25 years as well.”

Additionally, as Boston-area natives, Kevin McDonald has known Greg Cronin for over 20 years.

“He’s a great coach,” McDonald described. “The head coach in the American League is one of the most vital jobs in the entire organization. [For] scouts, it’s all about projecting where guys are going to be in the future, and what their ceiling is, and all these things, but the American League coach is the guy that has to do all the teaching.”

“I think the Avalanche are really lucky to have a guy with his experience level. Look at the roster: with Ben Meyers coming down there’s a lot of young kids that we want to get going as quickly as we can. It’s great to have Cronin down here to be able to handle that teaching part where he’s seen it all over his 30-plus years of coaching. He can relay that experience to the kids which is part of the connection. It builds trust.”

Cronin described McDonald as a hard worker. “He’s been in this league for a long time. He’s a very knowledgeable guy. He’s very active on the scouting circuit. He knows players. He and Chris MacFarland complement each other because both of those guys kind of have similar routes to their positions. The foundation behind their strengths has been their player evaluations. He’s like a walking database for players – both the AHL and the NHL.”

Another familiar face to McDonald is former Colorado Eagles General Manager, Craig Billington. Billington has been a part of the organization since 2002 and has a new title as Director of Goaltending Evaluation/Special Projects.

“He’s been around a lot,” McDonald said.”  We spent a lot of time together. We started at the rookie camp in San Jose, [Billington] was there the whole time, and then the NHL training camp and preseason. We traveled to Minnesota together.”

But their paths merged sooner than that. During the 2017-18 season, the Blues did not have an official AHL affiliate after the Vegas Golden Knights partnered with the Chicago Wolves, and both the Avalanche and Blues sent prospects to the San Antonio Rampage.

“That was me and [Billington] working on a daily basis,” he explained. “We’ve both been doing this for 25 years. All those years of American League meetings and committees and different things – we’ve had a long-term relationship. It was easy just to jump into the detail of, ‘This is what we’ve done. This is what we’ve liked. This is what works,’ especially the in-depth reports on the players that are returning.”

During the 2017 off-season, the Avalanche promoted its ECHL affiliate, the Colorado Eagles, to the AHL for the 2018-19 season and the Rampage officially linked with the St. Louis Blues.

“I got a page of notes from [Billington] on how last season went. He has been a great help, and he’s still in the organization. He’s still around, and he’s still around Denver. We have a lot of contact.”

To understand how the era of Kevin McDonald will shape the future of the Eagles, it’s important to first talk about the man who came before him in Billington. Nobody knew him quite like Cronin who says he talked to him every day because he was around often.

“His role with us was huge because he was hands-on in the sense that he was controlling the operations with [Steven Petrovek] and was the intermediary between Joe Sakic and us in terms of call-ups and giving them reports about what he sees because he was here so much,” Cronin explained. “[Billington] actually mirrored what we would see as coaches because he was so close to us all the time. If you look at us as a (familial) existence as hockey teams are, Craig was in that.”

McDonald’s strengths will largely be in his well-rounded, active scouting background and approach. According to Cronin, “That (familial) dynamic, I think [McDonald’s] kind of bouncing between, right? He’s not as intimate with our group as [Billington] was,” he started.

“[But] what he does bring is a broader view of the actual landscape around us in terms of the players on the opposing teams. He’s able to see that view of the AHL and NHL landscape that [Billington] didn’t have as close a view of. Every hire has their strengths. His strength is his ability to know players so well.”

It will be a balance. The travel schedule of McDonald will keep him busy keeping tabs on competition in the NHL with the parent club as well. McDonald is excited for the current Avs road trip because New York and New Jersey are especially familiar to him. 

“That’s been part of the excitement of coming here too,” he said. “I was based in the East and did most of my scouting [there], and now I’m based in the West.” He looks forward to scouting Western cities and bringing balance to his knowledge base.

Similar to Billington, McDonald will act as a connector between the Eagles and the Avs.

“Chris McFarland is here tonight too,” McDonald pointed out at last weekend’s series between the Eagles and Calgary’s AHL affiliate. “That’s the great thing about the proximity between the two teams. The NHL General Manager can come here and see with his own eyes what is going on. Cronin has been in the organization for a long time. It’s communicating what’s going on, just like we did the other night. There’s three call up’s in this process. You have a lot of talks of what the NHL team’s looking for, you present all the information, and then [MacFarland] can make the final decision.”

That communication is essential.

“I wouldn’t say we have scheduled weekly meetings,” Cronin explained. “There’s a lot of dialogue that takes place every day, daily conversations that strengthen that relationship. In the past, we’ve tried to have scheduled monthly meetings where we sit down and we discuss the progress of players and that’s a healthy conversation because it gets everybody up to par and creates transparency in what we’re doing. But, there’s daily talks. There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t talk to Kevin or Chris – I was talking to [Billington] every day last year because he was here so much.”

Those final decisions have been a topic of discussion for some time. What is the philosophy for the current batch of prospects?

“We want them to be ready,” McDonald explained. “There’s nothing more satisfying than, [for example], Martin Kaut – he has a disappointment where he has to start in the American League this year. He has a great opening night, two goals, plays well again on Saturday, goes up to the NHL, and then has one of his better NHL games in recent memory, earning that trust of everybody up there that he can do it. You’re happy for the player because you know how much hard work he’s put into that point.”

“My philosophy is just to try and encourage the players right now of how much opportunity we have in the NHL,” he added. “You just have to beat out your peers here [in the AHL]. There’s no better example than when the NHL GM is in the crowd tonight. Injuries, things change so quickly at a moment’s notice. You never know when you’re going to need a guy. If you can beat out your peers, we’re trying to promote that philosophy of, ‘Be the best player here, and your chance will come.’”

The Colorado Eagles have kicked off their 2023 campaign with a 2-3-0 start. Newcomer Charles Hudon, a 28-year-old veteran who joined Colorado from the Syracuse Crunch, is among the league’s points leaders through four games (4 G, 4 A). Also leading in points on the team is third-year Eagle at only 20 years old, Jean-Luc Foudy (3 G, 4 A). You can read more about him in this week’s prospect portfolio.

Players like Foudy, Oskar Olausson, and Ben Meyers have received top-six minutes early on and Shane Bowers, Alex Beaucage, and Daniil Zhuravlyov have earned chances on special teams. Annunen has posted a 0.891 SV%. It will be a revealing season to see who among them can separate. With a thinned-out prospect pool, this stage of development will become that much more important. A fresh face at the helm of Kevin McDonald’s pedigree should be a vital addition to the organization.