- Colorado won the Presidents’ Trophy by eight points, then got swept by Vegas in the Western Conference Final
- Joe Sakic barely touched the roster this summer and the panel keeps landing on one word: stable
- Read below for the cap math and the one contract Colorado still has to sort out
Joe Sakic ran it back.
The Avalanche finished eight points clear of the field, got swept out of the Western Conference Final by Vegas, and then spent the summer doing almost nothing about it. Jesse Montano of Guerilla Sports went looking for the changes on Daily Faceoff LIVE and could not find many.
“You kind of started going through it and you’re like oh, these guys are all coming back, more or less. Joe Sakic and Chris MacFarland up until a couple months ago, they really kind of prioritized that. They put this team together; they did not go chase rentals. They wanted guys coming in with term.”
Catch the full segment with host Tyler Yaremchuk and former NHL goalie Carter Hutton:
Yaremchuk framed the whole thing as a question worth asking. By his count Colorado already has 11 forwards, six defensemen and presumed starter MacKenzie Blackwood under contract for 2027-28, so he wanted to know whether a roster that locked in is a strength or a trap.
Montano’s read was that Sakic would take the word stable as a compliment.
The money explains most of it. Cale Makar’s eight-year, $163.2 million extension kicks in for 2027-28 at $20.4 million a season, sharing the books with Nathan MacKinnon at $12.6 million and Martin Necas at $11.5 million.
Colorado is sitting on roughly $400,000 in space right now and about $11.6 million projected for the summer of 2027. Artturi Lehkonen is the one piece still hanging, and Montano expects that deal to get done before or right after this season.
Sakic was asked last week whether $20.4 million for a defenseman leaves the Avalanche too top heavy. The team turned his answer into a graphic:
Built to win for a long time is the pitch. The postseason results are the counterargument.
Denver has not won a series past the second round in any year other than 2022. Makar hurt his upper body against Minnesota last spring and missed the first two games against Vegas, and Sakic pointed straight at that when he was asked what went wrong.
Jared Bednar heads into all of it on the final year of his contract.
The bet on MacKinnon and Makar runs eight more years. The rest of the roster is the part still on trial.
