Colorado Avalanche 2023-24 Season Preview
Hello, and welcome to Emma’s semi-annual blog post. Glad you could make it, glad I could make it.
The time has come again for Vendetta Sports Media’s NHL season previews. This time last year, the Colorado Avalanche were gearing up for what they hoped would be another Stanley Cup-winning season. After 82 injury-riddled games, they limped and hobbled into the first round of the playoffs against the Seattle Kraken. It was a disappointing first-round exit in seven games, but Avs Nation is hopeful that the offseason was enough time to rest, recover and get back at it in the 2023-24 season.
Line Combinations
Forwards
| Jonathan Drouin | Nathan MacKinnon | Mikko Rantanen |
| Artturi Lehkonen | Ryan Johansen | Valeri Nichushkin |
| Miles Wood | Ross Colton | Logan O’Connor |
| Andrew Cogliano | Ben Meyers | Chris Wagner |
Defensemen
Goaltenders
New Faces
Chris Wagner
Wagner is actually an old face to the Colorado Avalanche. In November of 2015, he was placed on waivers by the Anaheim Ducks and picked up by Colorado. He played 26 games, ended up back on waivers, was picked up again by the Ducks and immediately assigned to the AHL affiliate, San Diego Gulls. He’s bounced around from coast to coast for the last few years but most recently has been in Boston (and AHL affiliate in Providence) for five years. He signed a one-year two-way contract with Colorado for this coming season.
He’s made a handful of lineups in the NHL for Anaheim and Boston. He was a steady hand in the bottom six but has never been much of a scorer. Colorado doesn’t necessarily need any goal guys with the likes of Mikko Rantanen and Nathan MacKinnon putting up 50+ goals. I’m sure he’ll play 40 games in the bottom six but generally split his time between the Avs and the affiliate Colorado Eagles.
Miles Wood
Wood came to the Colorado Avalanche on the opening day of free agency, July 1. He signed a six-year, $15 million contract. Wood played eight seasons with the Devils and was a consistent player from the start. He has a career-high of 32 points, but he hasn’t put up more than 30 points since. That’s not necessarily an issue on this team but it shouldn’t go unnoticed.
Ryan Johansen
Johansen was traded to Colorado for Alex Galchenyuk for 50% retention for the last two years of his contract. He’s spent the last seven years in Nashville where he has played one complete 82-game season. He’s a pretty unremarkable player. Not necessarily bad, but also not outstanding.
Jonathan Drouin
Drouin is another new addition. He came from Montreal and in his nine-year career, he has not played a full 82-game season. This isn’t bad per se, until you take into account that he played 81 games in the 2018-19 campaign and hasn’t played more than 60 games in a season since. He missed a heavy chunk of games in the 2020-21 season due to health issues, including insomnia and anxiety.
Drouin returned to the second line in the 2021-22 season where he had average but consistent production. He started the 2022-23 season as a healthy scratch under Martin St. Louis and he came to Colorado as a free agent in July.
There was a stint of immaturity in 2016 while he was on the Tampa Bay affiliate, Syracuse Crunch. He flat-out didn’t show up to a game. He spent three months suspended but eventually earned his way back into the lineup and eventually back to Tampa. If this incident had happened more recently, I would be concerned but that was seven years ago. I’m sure he (mostly) acts like an adult now.
Bad News Bears
Now, let’s address the elephant in the room. His name is Gabe Landeskog, who will miss the entirety of the 2023-2024 season due to a knee injury.
Landeskog underwent arthroscopic knee surgery after the 2021-22 season and was originally supposed to miss only a fraction of the 2022-23 season, though he ended up missing the whole campaign. In May, the Avalanche announced that he would be having cartilage transplant surgery later that month and would miss the entirety of the 2023-24 season.
Landeskog’s leadership has played a huge role in the success and growth of this team. He has put up consistent numbers in his tenure with the team and has only gotten better with Rantanen and MacKinnon on the ice as well.
There were several departures in this free-agent period including Evan Rodrigues, J.T. Compher and Erik Johnson. Forward Alex Newhook was traded to the Montreal Canadiens. With these spots now vacant in the lineups, the younger players in the system are looking to fit in and make their mark. These departures, along with Landeskog and his broken cartilage, suggest that this next season could be a difficult one for the 2022 Stanley Cup Champions.
Verdict
I don’t think I have ever had a completely straightforward conclusion in my three years of writing season previews.
If MacKinnon, Rantanen, and Makar step into a leadership role, the Avalanche will have no issue this season. The problem last season was that there were too many injuries and no time to recover or adequately fill the gaps. They were just winging it the whole time. With several months off, hopefully, this Colorado Avalanche team has had enough time to rest and recover.
Development camp is quickly approaching. This is when we’ll find out who plays best and where. With a roster stacked with Rantanen, Makar and MacKinnon, the playoffs are never out of the picture. The outcome of this season really depends on who is going to step up and take on a leadership position.
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Line combinations from Daily Faceoff
