Avalanche Mailbag: Is The Depth Good Enough Now?

Also: Is Nichushkin OK and will Avs name a new captain?

We’re still in the dog days of summer, which means little to no Avalanche news. As you all know here, this is not a site full of daily manufactured clickbait filled with nonexistent trade rumor possibilities and other supercilious “content” designed to inflate their traffic numbers.

When the season starts, there will be daily entries, or pretty close to daily if not. Meantime, let’s do an Avalanche Mailbag.

Thanks to Elon Musk’s petty little ways, I can’t embed Twitter (excuse me Elon, X) posts here thanks to Elon’s little snit fit with Substack recently, so I’m writing out the questions as I received them.

Not all of you have Twitter (excuse me, X), so if you ask questions in the comments section, I’ll answer those too.

Q: Are you confident in the current depth of the Avs? Which players would you think receive a callup? @sirikesel

A: Yeah, I like the Avs’ depth right now. This is a better team right now than the one that finished last season. They got a veteran No. 2 center, Ryan Johansen, for Alex Galchenyuk, who almost certainly will never play in the NHL again following a nasty off-ice incident recently. That was a steal, made even more so by Nashville eating half of his $8 million cap hit.

I loved the acquisition of Ross Colton, another potential steal, and I loved the free-agent signing of Miles Wood. The fact that the Avs retained smart, reliable veterans Andrew Cogliano and Jack Johnson was another boost. Will the losses of J.T. Compher and Evan Rodrigues hurt? Only if Johansen and Colton don’t play up to their capabilities. I think both will have strong years in Denver.

The fourth line remains something of a mystery still, especially with Ben Meyers still unsigned. But Cogs will be on that line, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Fredrik Olofsson, acquired from Dallas, is a good fourth-liner.

Top callup probables, at least for now, are guys like Jean-Luc Foudy and Oskar Olausson. I won’t be shocked if Foudy makes the team out of training camp.