The new-look Avalanche must be led by a new-look Jared Bednar

 

It’s been a wild four years in Colorado Avalanche history.

From the final year of the Patrick Roy era to another unknown in Jared Bednar, who coached the Avalanche to a 60-loss season in his first season as coach, you couldn’t have asked for two more different personalities.

The last two years, however, the Avalanche finally seemed to latch on to an identity. Following repeated false starts on a rebuild that took several different swings to get it going for more than a year at a time, Colorado is finally on the right track and it appears to have the right man behind the bench.

With the team announcing they have signed Bednar to a two-year extension through the 2021-22 season, the time is now for both the Avalanche and Bednar.

As the Avs have dramatically retooled their team this summer, it’s going to be on Bednar to adapt to a team that’s been built to address some of the shortcomings of the past two seasons.

Nazem Kadri’s entrance as the second-line center solidifies a spot that has been problematic since Ryan O’Reilly’s departure. That alone gives Bednar a different look to work with but the overall depth added means the top-heavy teams of the last two years need to become a thing of the past. It’s time for Jared Bednar to adjust.

Even if you disagreed with Bednar’s deployment of the forwards last season, it was understandable why he’d play one of the league’s premier play-drivers in MacKinnon to the tune of 22:05 per night. He might have finished in seventh TOI among forwards but MacKinnon was the only forward in the NHL to lead his team in ice time.

MacKinnon’s linemates, Gabriel Landeskog and Mikko Rantanen, also averaged more than 20 minutes per night, making Colorado one of two teams (Edmonton was the other) with three forwards who averaged more than 20 minutes of ice time.

Colorado’s summer additions of Kadri, Joonas Donskoi, Andre Burakovsky, and Pierre-Edouard Bellemare along with the re-signing of Colin Wilson add four bonafide NHL players to a forward corps that was already in flux.

It’s on Bednar to not only ease off the throttle with his top-heavy approach to his forward usage but to also find suitable players for all of the new guys as well as help in getting them to buy into the culture and message of the locker room.

Where Bednar already has a leg up on getting some of that done is the strong relationship he’s built with Landeskog, MacKinnon, and Erik Johnson the last couple years.

Colorado’s leadership group has long been on shaky ground but having found success together and under a coach they believe in, this group is as formidable as any since Joe Sakic retired as a player.

Bednar will most certainly lean on that leadership group to help the new faces get acclimated but then the responsibility turns back to him in terms of putting the right players in the right positions to succeed.

Kadri and Bellemare are easy set-and-forget pieces as the centers of the second and fourth lines, respectively, but the rest of them are going to need to find homes in the Avalanche lineup.

Donskoi and Wilson should easily find homes in Colorado’s middle six somewhere and Bednar’s familiarity with Wilson should make that an especially simple task.

Given the quality of the talent acquired, old Bednar favorites Matt Calvert and Matt Nieto, seventh and eighth, respectively, among Avs forwards in TOI last year, will be pushed down the lineup and potentially into fourth-line roles alongside Bellemare.

All of that is good. A rising tide raises all boats. Colorado had an effective third line last season with Nieto and Calvert and a rotating cast of centers but Carl Soderberg primarily between them.

Now with Kadri around, no more Soderberg, and higher upside players in front of Nieto and Calvert, the guys Bednar developed a comfort leaning on are gone or have been marginalized.

While Bednar looks to figure out his preferred players in certain game situations, he also faces the tricky proposition of balancing the expectations of winning and continued development of players.

Burakovsky, especially, is a player the Avalanche paid a heavy price to acquire in order to give a legitimate look in their top six. His numbers all suggest a great shooter who needs more minutes to see if he can make the leap to being a 20-goal scorer.

Adding in Kadri gives him an experienced and talented pivot to potentially play next to that should help Burakovsky’s game. What would also help is a lengthy leash from Bednar, who has been quick to change direction with some young players.

One of those players is Tyson Jost, who I previously wrote about as potentially being the odd-man out this upcoming season. Given Colorado’s aggressive summer, he certainly could end up being just that. What kind of opportunities will Bednar give him?

Jost was tenth (!) among Avs forwards last year in even strength ice time. If the Avs are looking to capitalize on his potential and give him a legitimate look this season, that number needs to come up significantly.

But Burakovsky and Jost aren’t the only young players who need roles. What is Bednar’s plan for Vladislav Kamenev? I understand not being willing to rely on him for a major role given two straight season-ending injuries but are they just giving up on him? Why bother qualifying him if that’s the case?

And then there’s the AHL team. Outside of the 48-point season, the Avs have failed to call-up and incorporate any AHL players into lineup regulars. Sheldon Dries was good early but faltered hard and ultimately didn’t hang on to his job.

A.J. Greer is the ultimate example of a young player succeeding at a very high level in the AHL and only being given an extremely limited NHL role. While Bednar defended Gabe Bourque last season by noting one can’t expect much of a player who is only out there for about six minutes per game, he never mentioned that was the same position he put Greer in.

Part of that was because of the top-heavy lineup from last year. Should Bednar adjust to the lineup he will have next year, AHL fill-ins should theoretically get a few more minutes to show what they can do.

But it’s not just Kamenev, Dries, or Greer that might need looks. Colorado has multiple high picks pushing up against the NHL floor trying to breakthrough. Martin Kaut and Shane Bowers are two recent first-round picks who could reasonably expect NHL call-ups in the second half of the season.

How does Bednar plan to incorporate those guys into his lineup? It’s fair to wonder because he’s shown very little willingness to work young, unproven players into meaningful minutes while he’s chasing the playoffs.

The obvious exception here is Cale Makar but it should go without saying that Makar was an elite prospect and an extremely rare case. If you’re waiting on every prospect to completely dominate their level before giving them NHL time, your development system won’t produce anything but disappointment.

Bednar will have plenty of young players this year and next (Bowen Byram, hello) to try to find roles for as well as get the current NHL group to gel into a playoff team. It’s asking a lot of him but after the two-year extension he received today, the organization should be asking a lot of him.

The crutches from last year are no more. It’s time for Jared Bednar to walk tall.