Where the Avalanche stands as preseason nears a close

It’s been a busy couple of days for the Avalanche, at least in terms of news, as the team continues to make its way to next Wednesday’s opening night tilt against the Chicago Blackhawks.

This isn’t going to be a lengthy piece so let’s just take a look at where things sit with the Avs right now, starting with the head coach.

Jared Bednar tests positive for COVID

Bednar tested positive this morning and will not be available to coach the final two games of the preseason, tonight and Saturday, against the Dallas Stars.

Bednar is not allowed to travel with the team, which is in Dallas tonight, and must stay away from the facility for at least a week unless he twice tests negative in the coming days.

There’s never a good time for a team to lose its head coach but Bednar’s absence comes just as the team has gotten down to its final cuts (more on this later) as the roster currently sits at 31 players.

Not having Bednar available to see the games or practices while assistant coaches Ray Bennett and Nolan Pratt run the show means the forward battle (to a lesser extent the defenseman battle, too) gets tougher to make a final call.

At this point in the preseason, systems are in place and everyone is getting accustomed to the routine that will be run in the regular season so Bednar’s absence won’t be as critical in those areas.

Pavel Francouz is out 3-4 weeks with a lower-body injury

With Bednar out of the picture to tell us Francouz was week-to-week, the organization just decided to throw us all a bone and give us an actual timeline with his injury, suffered two days ago against Vegas.

While it looked bad, there were some early returns that Francouz’s injury may not be quite as bad as first thought. The timeline on the injury is a little longer than I was expecting but when looking at the October schedule for the Avalanche, they can pretty easily dance around this injury if they want to.

If the injury is three weeks, Francouz will miss eight games, none of which are back-to-backs and the team has three different two-day breaks between games. If he is out for four weeks, only one additional game gets added. It’s the softest part of the schedule in terms of the number of games in that timeframe so this looks manageable. The real question is if Francouz can stay healthy whenever he returns because this is starting to turn into a real problem.

The injury supposedly is unrelated to the double-hip surgery he had in the offseason. I don’t know if that’s good or bad, but that’s the scuttlebutt.

All waiver players cleared, Francouz on IR leaves roster at 31 players

All four players sent through waivers yesterday (Roland McKeown, Dylan Sikura, Stefan Matteau, Kiefer Sherwood) cleared and Francouz was transferred to the IR, retroactive to October 5.

Minus those five players, the Avs sit with 31 players left and a max opening night roster of 23.

What has been encouraging is the young players hanging around. You look at the veterans at forward, Jayson Megna and Artem Anisimov, fighting for a job and then the youths looking for work in Alex Newhook, Shane Bowers, Martin Kaut, Sampo Ranta, and Mikhail Maltsev and it looks like a good chance the organization is going to lean on the younger crowd for help to start the season.

On defense, it’s really just Justin Barron as the only young guy vying for something as Bowen Byram should be a roster lock and if he isn’t something dumb has happened.

Anisimov and Jack Johnson are still PTO guys looking for actual contracts. When Oskar Olausson was sent back to the OHL, Colorado’s contracts dropped to 43 of a maximum 50 so there’s even more space to add them if the club wants.

UPDATED ROSTER MOVES

As today’s practice got underway, the Avalanche announced several more roster moves as they move to finalizing their opening night right roster.

Shane Bowers and Martin Kaut were sent to the AHL where Eagles training camp is in its opening days. Dennis Gilbert and Jayson Megna were placed on waivers. If both players clear, they will be assigned to the Eagles tomorrow.

Artem Anisimov was released from his PTO, officially ending his tenure with the team.

After the moves, the roster now sits at 13 F, 10 D, 3 G.

The forwards remaining:

• Nathan MacKinnon
• Mikko Rantanen
• Gabe Landeskog
• Nazem Kadri
• Andre Burakovsky
• Val Nichushkin
• J.T. Compher
• Tyson Jost
• Darren Helm
• Logan O’Connor
• Mikhail Maltsev
• Alex Newhook
• Sampo Ranta

The defensemen:

• Cale Makar
• Sam Girard
• Devon Toews (Currently injured and expected to miss opening night)
• Erik Johnson
• Ryan Murray
• Bowen Byram
• Justin Barron
• Jack Johnson
• Kurtis MacDermid
• Jacob MacDonald

And finally the goalies:

• Jonas Johansson
• Darcy Kuemper
• Pavel Francouz (On Injured Reserve)

With Francouz not counting against the roster, the roster now sits at 25. In order to be compliant by opening night, the Avs have to get down to 23, though their preference in recent years has been to sit at 21 or 22 players most of the time.

At 13 forwards already, this is very likely their opening night group and if it’s not, there’s only one cut left to make.

It’s a little more complicated defensively because Toews is hurt and not expected to be ready to go by opening night but the timeline for his return remains unknown. If Toews is put on IR, that opens another roster spot for one of the other defenders to stick around until he is healthy.

If Toews is not placed on IR, he counts against the roster and that means an extra cut needs to be made from that group of 10 defensemen.

The list above up to Byram should all be no-brainer roster locks. After that, it’s a choose-your-adventure group of players.

Barron is a rookie who has been badly exposed defensively this preseason but has enough intriguing characteristics he might stick around.

Johnson is a veteran whose play has steadily declined in preseason but is an experienced PK guy who blocks shots and lays the body.

MacDermid only lays the body and struggles with basically all other aspects of hockey.

MacDonald is the same chaos-wielding sorcerer from last year that constantly shoots, flies up the ice with reckless abandon and doesn’t seem to worry about his defensive responsibilities too much. He’s ten tons of fun but might be a little too stressful for the coaching staff’s liking.

To reiterate, if Toews is on IR, only one cut has to be made. If Toews is not on IR, two cuts have to be made. They can choose to cut more in each situation if they’d like.

If Johnson is to make the team, he needs to be signed to an actual contract at some point.