By Zackery Robert
Coming up next in this series is the defending Stanley Cup champions the Colorado Avalanche. The Avs have had a lot of success in recent years culminating in a Stanley Cup last season. For this article the same will apply to the Avalanche as it did to the Coyotes, players drafted by the original franchise who came over to Colorado and played for the Avalanche can be considered for the best and worst picks of the franchise.
Starting off we will turn to the old Quebec Nordiques franchise which moved to Colorado in 1995. This player was drafted by the Nordiques but played their entire career with the Franchise including the majority of his career in Colorado. Joe Sakic was the number 15 overall pick in the 1987 draft and had his two most point productive seasons as a Colorado Avalanche with 120 and 118 points respectively. He won his two Stanley Cups as a player with the Avalanche and his third as the general manager of the Avalanche just last season. Sakic won the Conn Smythe in 1996 and in the 2000-2001 season earned himself a Hart trophy, Lady Byng trophy and Lester B. Pearson trophy as the league’s MVP with his 118 point season.
Next up is former number one overall pick Nathan MacKinnon. MacKinnon started off hot with a Calder trophy winning season and then began to taper off. Turn to the 2017-2018 season and he punched through the wall with 97 points in 74 games and since then he has been unstoppable. The last six seasons have all been over a point per game and with this season being his first hitting the century mark in points it seems that MacKinnon has only higher to go being only 28 this year.
Now if you’ve followed this series much you will notice that this next player is the most recently drafted player to make a team’s best draft choices list. Cale Makar was the fourth overall pick in 2017 coming out of the Alberta Junior Hockey League, or AJHL, after two seasons in the NCAA Makar began his NHL career. Makar stunned in his first season winning the Calder trophy and it has only gotten better since then. With his last three seasons being at a point per game or higher Makar looks to be the next best defensemen in the league for the next decade. To his resume, Makar has a Stanley Cup, a Conn Smythe and a Norris trophy to go along with the Calder trophy. In only four seasons he has a better resume then 80% of defencemen who have played 10 plus years in the NHL.
Coming off of three amazing picks for the franchise we will now shift gears to three picks that did not do much for the franchise. Coming up first is former 2014 first round pick Conner Bleackley. Bleackley was drafted 23rd overall and never even signed with the Avalanche, being redrafted two years later to the St Louis Blues in the fifth round. Bleackley has never suited up for an NHL game and has been a constant AHL player and is currently an ECHL player. This pick never panned out and two picks later Boston drafted David Pastrnak who is having a superstar year for the Bruins with a 60+ goal season this year.
Next we will take a look at the 2010 draft where Colorado held pick 17 and went with centre Joey Hishon. Hishon was a good junior player so his stock must’ve been close to a middle six centre which would have been very good for 17th, but Hishon never made much of an impact on that potential. He played 13 games for the Avalanche and scored one goal with one assist. Totalling two career points Hishon would go overseas to finish out his playing career after the 2017-2018 season. Colorado would subsequently struggle for the next few years with top picks in 2011 and 2013 and no pick in the first round in 2012 so it would have been nice for this pick to help in the future but unfortunately that wasn’t the case.
Thirdly we will go back to the 2002 entry draft. Colorado had a very late first round pick at number 28 and used it to choose Jonas Johansson. The Swedish winger would bounce around the AHL and ECHL until finally cracking an NHL roster for one game in the 2005-2006 season for the Washington Capitals. He would never make it back to the NHL after that, continuing his play in the minors until moving back to Europe and playing in multiple locations until his retirement in 2017. This first round was not heavy with long term players but with Johansson never playing for the Avalanche, this pick should be on this list.
Joe Sakic has done a remarkable job building this team since his tenure began and their development of their prospects has been mid-level at best so as it stands to see some improvement if they would like to continue long term success around their core of MacKinnon, Rantanen, Landeskog, and Makar. So in a draft as deep as this one it pays to put more effort into who to draft when you won’t need the players to join right away but rather in 3 to 4 seasons.
Currently Colorado sees themselves back in the playoffs and trying to run it back and win back-to-back cups, once that is all finished they will look at the draft and looking at the draft Colorado holds four picks, 1st, 5th, 6th, 7th. With Colorado looking at a 50 win season and their recent history of playoff success, a prediction of their first round pick landing between 26-32 seems decently accurate, nothing is a guarantee in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, so with that Colorado should look for a forward at this pick. In their recent seven drafts they have held seven first round picks which three have been traded away which leaves four left and two are forwards which one hasn’t developed much yet being a 2021 pick. At the tail end of the first round there are forwards like Calum Ritchie, Otto Stenberg, Kohen Ziemmer and Kasper Haltunnen. With these names it would be foolish to pass up on the idea of a first round forward. My personal opinion would be centre for the Avs so the first three names make more sense but we will have to see how their run ends up in order to decide who they will truly draft in June.
For more information on the 2023 NHL Draft class be sure to pick up your copy of the comprehensive DraftPro 2023 NHL Draft Guide.