BSN Exclusive: Sakic provides State of the Avalanche update

LAS VEGAS – As the Colorado Avalanche were compiling a 1-2 record in Las Vegas at this past weekend’s rookie showcase, they did so under the watchful eye of general manager Joe Sakic, who joined the team for the duration of the event.

A year ago, Sakic was feeling the heat after a 48-point disaster of a season and the black cloud of the inevitable Matt Duchene trade was still hanging over the organization. Fast forward one year and Sakic is suddenly guiding one of the top young teams in the NHL after a 95-point season got them back into the postseason. The Duchene trade dealt with, the Avalanche took off and made the postseason on the final day of the regular season and followed it with a stronger-than-expected showing in a six-game series against the Nashville Predators.

Heading into the summer, it was a major question whether or not this front office would resist the temptation to spend big money on free agents simply because it had the salary cap space. The Avalanche front office resisted the temptation to hand out expensive long-term contracts and instead used their abundance of cap space in a more creative way than we’ve seen in the past. By agreeing to take the expensive final year of Brooks Orpik’s contract from the Washington Capitals (and subsequently buying out Orpik, who returned to Washington at a much cheaper rate), the Avalanche were able to acquire a significant upgrade at the backup goaltender spot with the trade for Philipp Grubauer for only a second-round selection.

With Grubauer signed for three years and Semyon Varlamov coming back for the final year of his contract, the Avalanche appear set in net in a way they haven’t been since the days of Patrick Roy. The team also inked Ian Cole and Matt Calvert, both recently of the Columbus Blue Jackets, to three-year deals over the summer. With that, the team essentially packed it in at the NHL level and went through the business of bringing back select free agents. On paper, it’s not many moves but Sakic feels the team improved in key areas.

“I think we got deeper,” Sakic told BSN Denver. “Obviously, we like our goaltending situation. We feel we got deeper on the back end. As you saw in the playoffs, you can get thin there. There always seems to be injuries. We like the depth there. Offensively, we’re hoping for internal growth. We’re excited to get going. I know the players are. We all want to see year two of this and see where we go.”

With Cole, the Avalanche saw an opportunity to add an experienced and capable defender to a group that saw injuries force David Warsofsky and Duncan Siemens into the lineup during the playoffs. Given the youth currently on the blue line and the prospects on the way, Sakic felt it important to add another player who has walked the walk to help enhance a flourishing culture in Colorado’s locker room.

“Big, strong heavy defender that can move the puck,” Sakic said of Cole. “We’ve got some young kids and he brings that leadership as a two-time Cup winner. He’s physical and he’s somebody we’re really counting on to help with the leadership on the back end of our team and he does bring that physical element we’re looking to add.”

While Grubauer, Cole, and Calvert will certainly have roles to fill for the Avalanche, that trio is nothing like the headline-worthy splashes made by some of their counterparts in the Central Division, most notably the St. Louis Blues. Having finished just one point behind the Avalanche after getting beat down on the last day of the regular season, the Blues pushed their chips to the middle in trading for familiar face Ryan O’Reilly and spending money on Tyler Bozak, David Perron, and Pat Maroon in free agency. It was the kind of summer pundits love but results of building heavily through outside investment are varied, to say the least. Does seeing a team have a summer like that add extra pressure to try to keep up?

“I don’t know about pressure,” Sakic said. “We’re still in this. We want to keep rolling. It’s not a sprint. It’s not like at the end of last year we thought ‘Oh, we’ve got to make two splashes to stay there.’ We’re still building this thing up. We’re only a year older than we were last year so we’ve got a lot of exciting things going here and we want to keep building this and seeing the growth this year and maybe next summer we’ll see what we can do.”

With them constantly being attached to big rumors thanks to their ownership of Ottawa’s first-round selection, Sakic dismissed the idea his team was big-game hunting.

“We’re not looking to do anything big right now,” Sakic told BSN Denver. “We’ll see what presents itself over the course of the year but we’re pretty happy with the guys we have and we’re excited to see how we start and how this team keeps growing.”

The growth of the young players was a theme throughout the conversation as Sakic continued to hammer home the idea that he likes what the team has in place right now and wants to see what this group is capable of in year two. Even so, there are enough select veterans in place to ensure all of the young guys aren’t forced into taking on too much too soon.

“You don’t want to put too much pressure on them,” Sakic explained. “It’s their second year. They had the first year just figuring out the league, doing whatever they needed in the offseason to get stronger, hopefully, better and quicker. I saw them before camp started and they all look great. They put in the time over the summer and now it’s just figuring out how to improve on last year. We can’t put too much pressure on them because they’re still young but I’m excited to see what they’re going to do and see how much growth they’ve made over the summer.”

Prominent second-year players include Tyson Jost, J.T. Compher, Alexander Kerfoot, and Samuel Girard. That group played a decisive role in Colorado’s season this year and the organization is looking forward to seeing what they do in round two.

“They’re all going to have more important roles and they’re all looking forward to that challenge,” Sakic said. “That’s one thing I love about this team. They’re all looking forward to getting better and getting better together. They’re excited for the start of the year, as we all are.”

That love of being challenged is something the Avalanche have targeted in recent years as they’ve made minor tweaks to their organizational focus. The emphasis on leadership and accountability has been noticeable as they’ve stocked up on former captains at all levels of the organization.

“There’s one thing you learn: you have to have a good mixture,” Sakic said. “You have to have guys that care about each other and care about winning and that’s a priority. To have that pride to want to win. We feel like all these kids, their primary focus is getting better and winning hockey games and staying together. We like that about this group. You don’t ever want to lose that.”

Another of the young guys the Avalanche are hoping to see something from is Vladislav Kamenev, who was acquired in the Matt Duchene trade in November, broke his arm minutes into his Avalanche debut, and returned in the middle of a playoff run and couldn’t find a home in the lineup.

“He’ll have every opportunity,” Sakic said of Kamenev’s chances to be an impact player this year. “Unfortunately for him, he basically missed all of last year and that’s a year of development. He finally got healthy but we were in such a run that he wasn’t up to game speed. You can tell he put in the time he got stronger and I’m excited to see what he can do. He’s got a tremendous amount of skill.”

A young player the Avalanche are very high on but whose availability is in question is Conor Timmins, who missed this weekend’s experience in Vegas due to the return of concussion symptoms. As always with concussions, the team is in a “wait and see” mode as they wait for Timmins’s condition to improve.

“Conor is…we’re going to take this one slow,” Sakic said. “He’s getting better. He was doing really well, had a minor setback, he’s back to where he was before but he’s a guy that we’re going to make sure…he really hasn’t trained this summer the way you need to. So, when he’s fully cleared we’re going to give him that time to almost do that summer training and build him up slowly and make sure he’s strong and comfortable on the ice. When he’s ready to go, he’ll go. Like all of our guys, you want to make sure with concussions he’s totally 100%. We know he’s going to get there and when he’s there we look forward to having him. But we’re going to make sure he is not rushing himself. I know he wants to get out there but we’ve got to do what’s best for him.”

In revisiting the 48-point season to find lessons learned from such an epic failure, Sakic indicated they knew they were in for a bumpy ride and just needed to get to the other side of it before they could put their new vision in place.

“We made a decision at the start of [2016-17] that we’re going to have to show some patience and grow this up and get younger. We had some older guys that…I’d almost say that was a year of saying ‘Just be patient. Let the kids come.’ and we feel like now we’ve got the kids that are ready. Some of the kids then weren’t ready and we didn’t want to put them in the situation of them coming just because we need them. We feel like, organizationally depth-wise, we’re getting there.  We’re getting to the place where we’re really excited to see the growth of our young guys and growing together. Last year was an incredible year for us but we know we’re still a long ways away. We’ve still got to grow and get better.”

While his team on the ice is young, Sakic is relatively young to the front office executive game and he seems to be growing more into the role as time goes on.

“You get more comfortable every year,” he said. “You’re learning every year. It’s not easy to just step in and…here you are. I feel like I’ve got a great staff I’m working with. Our pros, our amateurs, our development, working with Chris, and the staff. We love the coaches we have in place with this group. Everybody is growing together. I’m the same. I’m always trying to learn and trying to get better. You learn from mistakes and everybody makes mistakes and that’s how you, just like as a player, it’s how you deal with mistakes, how do you learn from it, overcome it, and try to avoid doing the same stuff.”

While the roster did not experience significant turnover, there were major changes elsewhere in the organization as the Avalanche welcome the Colorado Eagles as their new AHL affiliate with the Utah Grizzlies taking the Eagles’ old spot as the ECHL affiliate. With the change, the Avalanche made a switch at the top of the AHL coaching ranks, hiring well-traveled Greg Cronin to lead a staff that won the last two Kelly Cups with the Eagles. Cronin’s experience was crucial in him getting the job as he’s leading such an inexperienced staff.

“When I spoke with him, his communication, he’s been around multiple leagues,” Sakic said of Cronin. “He’s an experienced guy and just his personality, the way he is. The way he practices fits with what we want to do and we have two young coaches there so we wanted to make sure we had some experience with them.”

While assistants Aaron Schneekloth and Ryan Tobler, who were the two coaches of the Eagles in their last two Kelly Cup-winning years, they only have 11 combined years of coaching experience, none higher than the ECHL. With that, Colorado decided to use the AHL team to also help develop two young coaches they are very high on.

This is another jump,” Sakic said. “American Hockey League is a tough league. I know they’re excited about making the next step and having Greg come in is going to help them develop as well.”

Another area of change in the organization came when longtime director of player development David Oliver left to join the new coaching staff of the New York Rangers. The still-vacant position is one Colorado is not in a hurry to fill as they’ll essentially look to replace the job in the aggregate.

“No rush,” Sakic said of finding a replacement. “Brian Willsie, Brett Clark, we’ll mix and match. Eventually, we’ll get there but right now we’re not in a rush. We’re comfortable with the staff we have. We’ve got three guys and a couple in Europe that take care of European guys. We’ve got enough of a staff that we can all chip in and do a little bit more. It’s not a concern. We’re in good hands. Are we going to look to add another guy down the line? Yes, but we’re still working on things like that.”

When the Avalanche do look to add that person, they’ve already formed a vision of what they’re after.

“You have to be a relationship person,” Sakic began. “Know the players inside and out, and know it’s really a skill development position. You’ve got to know to show the guys who are working with the players on video what to work on one on one when you can.”

An area where the organization did not change was in their practice of not signing players with a year left on their entry-level contracts to lucrative extensions. The only player they’ve done this with under the Sakic regime has been Gabe Landeskog. There was lots of talk about them potentially signing Mikko Rantanen and Nikita Zadorov (who is on his second deal, not ELC) as they have 24 of their 47 signed contracts expiring next summer and those two appear to be core pieces moving forward.

“We talked with Mikko and here at some point as the year goes on we’ll speak with Nikita as well,” Sakic said. “We had initial contact with Mikko. I would love to [get a Rantanen deal done] but they are content seeing this year play out.”