Such is the nature of professional sports. Two nights ago, a fairy tale. Tonight, a nightmare. Fresh off a 40-save performance that doesn’t technically count as a shutout but absolutely should, Adam Werner never stood a chance tonight in Edmonton in a 6-2 loss against an Oilers team angry coming off a blowout loss and looking to get their mojo…...

DALLAS – A crash was always coming. But after a 7-0-1 start, the Avalanche will wake up on November 6 and find themselves at 8-5-2 following their fifth straight loss, a 4-1 decision at the Dallas Stars. “A stretch like this sucks either way,” Erik Johnson said. “I don’t care what our record was to start the year. It’s no…...

“If we want to win games, we’ve got to start strong. Right now we’re not doing that.” That was the first thing Cale Makar said to me following Colorado’s 2-1 loss to the Dallas Stars. It wasn’t that the Avs didn’t show up this time, like in their other two regulation losses against Anaheim and St. Louis where they never…...

An 82-game regular season is never easy to navigate. A week after Mikko Rantanen pretzel’d himself into a lower-body injury that appears to be trending more towards short-term, the Avalanche rocked the hockey world this morning when they announced Gabe Landeskog was going to be out indefinitely with a lower-body injury. The Avs last played on Saturday night and…...

You know sometimes you go into matchmaking with a group of friends and you get into a game where the opposing team is a bunch of randos who have never played together before? That was kind of the video game equivalent of the Avalanche annihilating Vegas today. The 6-1 Avalanche win comes on Nevada Day, a holiday nobody outside of…...

MacKinnon. Landeskog. Rantanen. The Three-Headed Monster. Coaches dream of having a group that talented, and Jared Bednar isn’t afraid to unleash the monster. Coaches on the opposite bench…well let’s just say they’re not so lucky. Calgary Flames head coach Bill Peters has felt the effects inherent to this dominant group. Despite having nearly a week to prepare, Peters and the…...

During Colorado’s long wait between games two and three, the seasons managed to change from fall to winter and back to fall. Colorado, eh? As the Avs sat around waiting for their next victim, the NHL continued on. In Vancouver last night, highly-touted defenseman Quinn Hughes finally scored his first NHL goal in his eighth NHL game. The Canucks announcers…...

Nathan MacKinnon is a superstar. Mikko Rantanen is right behind him. The world seemingly expects Cale Makar to cure cancer in between shifts. It can be easy to forget the steady presence of Gabe Landeskog, who plays third banana on the league’s most dominant top line. It’s a new year but the same old captain for the Avalanche as he…...

Preseason nothin’. As Colorado got off to the kind of start it wanted with a 5-3 win over the Calgary Flames, it was the player who did not play for the Avalanche in the preseason that drove the bus. Mikko Rantanen, who agreed to a six-year contract during Colorado’s final preseason game last weekend, reminded everyone except a couple of nerd…...

It’s that time of year again. Preseason is winding down, rosters are finalizing, and the promise of a new season awaits. For the Avs, that season comes with heightened expectations. Not only have they made the playoffs in consecutive years, but they easily blew through the top Western Conference team last April and pushed a very strong Sharks team to…...

And just like that, there was hope. As the Mikko Rantanen contract stalemate has continued, there have been more moments of disappointment than optimism. Until now. Speaking to Swiss television station Teleticino reporter Nicola Martinetti on behalf of DNVR, Rantanen opened up on topics ranging from his time in Switzerland to the Avalanche and, yes, his contract situation. “I feel…

It’s safe to say expectations are high for Cale Makar. It’s also safe to say he doesn’t care all that much about them. The Avalanche have been lucky enough to see many incredible forwards come through town since 1995 but the high-end defenders have been harder for the organization to find. There have been brief tenures of guys like Rob…...

It hasn’t quite been the preseason the Avalanche were hoping for in terms of results as they lost their third straight to open their preseason schedule. A 4-3 loss to the Minnesota Wild today in Minneapolis was another of those classic battles between roster disparity as the home team iced a mostly-NHL lineup and the Avalanche sent a mixture of…...

Getting traded is a weird experience. Players always describe it as a whirlwind, one that includes upheaval of your daily life and where you call home. For Calle Rosen, the shock came in the middle of the night, a three AM phone call that woke him from slumber and kept him awake the rest of the night. Colorado? The Avalanche?…...

When Bowen Byram made his unofficial Avalanche debut in the first game of the Anaheim Rookie Faceoff, it all seemed so easy for him. He registered two assists and generally dominated most of his shifts in a breezy 5-2 win over Vegas. Everyone more or less had the same thoughts following that performance – that sure looked easy. Things got…...

With Marner’s new contract, it’s a brave new world for RFA contracts. How will this affect Mikko Rantanen and the Avs?

Everyone knows the deal with the Colorado Avalanche. They’re good, they’re young, they’re exciting, and the rest of the NHL is starting to get worried about them. What the rest of the league should really be on the lookout for is what’s happening below the NHL level. Colorado came to the Anaheim Rookie Faceoff with a roster that could…...

IRVINE, Calif. — Every prospect has to take certain steps before breaking into the NHL and making it to the big time. For most, it’s a systematic process that takes years of development and honing of their skills to carve out a specific niche in the world’s most talented league. Even wunderkind and new media darling Cale Makar spent…...

Conor Timmins hasn’t played in a competitive hockey game since May 11, 2018. That night was Game 5 of the OHL Finals and as a member of the Soo Greyhound, the defenseman got rocked just inside the blueline by Riley Stillman. Timmins ultimately returned to the game, raising questions about coach Drew Bannister and his staff’s handling of the…...