Bednar: "This Is The Deepest Team We've Had Since 2022"

We'll see

The Colorado Avalanche has made the playoffs the past eight seasons under Jared Bednar, but only one of those teams (2021-22) has advanced past the second round. So, when Bednar told reporters today that this coming Avs team is the “Deepest team we’ve had since 2022”, my first reaction was, “Well, yeah, I guess. We’ll see.”

Last season’s playoff team was supposed to be as deep as it gets, if you paid attention to Avs local pundits at the time, but the team choked in a first-round Game 7 to Mikko Rantanen and the Dallas Stars - the second straight year the Stars eliminated the Burgundy and Royal Blue.

The 2022-23 team was certainly not as deep as the one that lifted Lord Stanley’s silver punchbowl overhead a few months before. Nazem Kadri was gone, Andre Burakovsky was gone, Philipp Grubauer was always an overrated goalie, and key guys down the depth chart - including Jack Johnson and Nicolas Aube-Kubel, were lost. Then, Val Nichushkin pulled his personal misbehavior routine for parts of the next two years.