Here We Go...

The Avalanche open the 2024-25 campaign Wednesday in Vegas.

So here we are. Just about 24 hours away from Opening Night of the 2024-25 season. 

The Colorado Avalanche are still in the midst of their championship window, but with other teams in comparable windows of their own, the immediacy to claim a second Stanley Cup with this group looms larger this year than the past two.

The Avs open the campaign with a test right off the hop, traveling to take on Vegas Wednesday night. The 2022 and 2023 champs will cap Turner’s Opening Night national broadcasts, following the conclusion of the Rangers/Penguins game. So with seven other NHL games on the slate ahead of the scheduled start of the Avs/Knights, here are a few last-minute points of discussion.

FORWARD DEPTH

The knock on Colorado the last two years has been the team’s lack of true scoring depth beyond the top-six. The Avs shored up their second line at the deadline last year with the addition of Casey Mittelstadt. With a month-plus of regular-season play, a two-round-playoff push, an offseason workout routine and a training camp in the Avalanche system, I expect Mittelstadt’s development with the team to be even greater this year. The loss of Naz Kadri still hangs over this team like a dark cloud over a stuffed donkey, but it seems to be clearing with the integration of a player like Mittelstadt into the lineup moving forward. The third line of Miles Wood, Ross Colton and a healthy Logan O’Connor should help with grit scoring and heavy play. Their chemistry was apparent when they were together and LOC’s injury caused cohesiveness issues down the stretch and in the postseason.

Which leaves us with the bottom of the lineup: Chris Wagner, Parker Kelly, Joel Kiviranta and Calum Ritchie. Ritchie is the wildcard in that group, showing that he has skill to be a top-six player at some point, while the others are more established NHL players who are slotted for a fourth-line role at this point. Ritchie is also one of the 10 youngest players in the league and possesses talent and upside that can help cover up many of Colorado’s draft misses in the past decade. Ivan Ivan and Nikolai Kovalenko are not on the Opening Night roster, but that’s more for cap purposes than anything else and are expected to be added before puck drop on The Strip. There are so many moves to be made to be cap compliant and well situated moving forward in the days leading up to the Opening Night, so a lot of these are done on paper, but don’t properly reflect what we see on the ice. Which leads to the next point…