Colorado Avalanche general manager Joe Sakic has been at the helm now for six years. His team has spiraled downward and hit rock bottom last year with a league’s worst 22-56-4 record, worth 48 points. To make matters worse, the team only has a handful of prospects and don’t seem to have a plan or path to take the franchise on.
According to NBC Sports’ Adam Gretz, Sakic is a likely candidate to be on the hotseat this season. The team’s lack of a proper path, constant roster questions that seem to be held up by a potential Matt Duchene trade that has never happened and a shortcoming of prospects seem to suggest that he may be the first general manager out the door this season. To make matters worse, the Avalanche have had the worst defense in the league for the past two years, according to Gretz, and have made no defensive changes this year.
- The Avalanche still have quite a few questions when it comes to its roster. Although the team is currently negotiating with defenseman Nikita Zadorov, the Avalanche only have three defensemen on their roster, including Erik Johnson, Tyson Barrie and Mark Barberio, according to NBC Sports James O’Brien. With more than $11MM in cap space still remaining, Colorado has the ability to acquire more players and depth. However, considering their lack of depth, using draft picks to trade for a player makes little sense. That leaves signing leftover free agents to short-term deals, but there are very few defensive free agents of note. Trading Matt Duchene may be their best way to fill in some of those holes.
- O’Brien also points out that, on a positive note, that the Avalanche have very few long-term deals, which should give the team quite a bit of flexibility. Only Nathan MacKinnon ($6.3MM AAV till 2022-23), Gabriel Landeskog ($5.57MM AAV till 2020-21), Carl Soderberg ($4.75MM AAV till 2019-20), Johnson ($6MM AAV till 2022-23) and Barrie ($5.5MM AAV till 2019-20) are locked up for the next three years.
One thing that is really interesting to me is how passive the local Denver media is when discussing Sakic compared to the national media outlets. There’s very little pressure applied to Sakic publicly here in Colorado, and a deference to what I would categorize as a pretty solid mindset in building a system and bringing in more young talent is prevalent among everyone I talk to who has an interest in the team locally.
We all recognize that the pre-lockout success that the Avalanche had is not tenable in the modern NHL, but the (lack of) pressure to get back to that level is odd, especially in a city that has been heavily interested in the Avalanche since their arrival.
Thank you. This is absolute truth.
Any other team…. any other market… Sakic would have got the boot last year no questions asked.
Colorado’s farm system only has a handful of prospects because they have drafted terribly under Sakic. In the 2016 draft, they had the chance to draft Charlie McAvoy, Jakob Chychrun, Jake Bean or Dante Fabbro with the 10th pick, but instead selected forward Tyson Jost. This selection makes little sense when you consider how bad Colorado’s defense is. This isn’t a knock on Jost. He’s a fine player, but drafting one of those d-men would have been a far wiser choice for the Colorado organization. Draft decisions like that one are why Colorado’s farm system is thin
You never draft for need, you always take the best player available. Now, I’m not saying that Jost is better than Chychurn or Bean, I don’t believe it actually,but Sakic probably had Jost as the best player on his board and picked him.
I’m pretty sure Jost was a steal at that pick
Never meet your heroes.