Sakic recognized team’s needs, addressed them
Nathan Mackinnon wants the puck. Cale Makar wants the puck. Mikko Rantanen wants the puck, along with Gabe Landeskog, Nazem Kadri, Devon Toews, and the rest of the star-studded players from the Avalanche, the NHL’S secondhighest scoring team.
The Avalanche didn’t need Claude Giroux, who also demands the puck.
This team didn’t need help in scoring goals and making plays. It needed depth among the bottom-six forwards and last two defensive pairings. To that end, Avs general manager Joe Sakic addressed those needs in a week’s worth of additions that did not include the high-scoring Giroux.
Fans probably wanted Sakic to make a big addition before Monday’s NHL trade deadline, but the Avs already did that the previous Monday when they acquired skilled defenseman Josh Manson from Anaheim. Manson, 6-foot-3 and 220 pounds, was often a first-pairing guy for the Ducks but is now on Colorado’s second pairing in the deepest blueline corps in coach Jared Bednar’s six seasons.
The Nhl-leading Avs are ready to climb into the playoff foxhole defensively, and they also appear significantly more skilled and tougher with Monday’s two additions of forwards Artturi Lehkonen and Andrew Cogliano from the Canadiens and Sharks, respectively. Lehkonen, 26, will slide in on the third line and Cogliano, 34, will play on the fourth.
Last Tuesday, the Avs added depth forward Nico Sturm from the Wild to win faceoffs and throw his 6-foot-1, 210-pound body around in the corners. Another need was met.
In all, Sakic added four players before the deadline and only lost one — undersized forward Tyson Jost, who went to Minnesota for Sturm.
“I feel like our bottom six and our depth is much more improved,” Sakic said shortly after Monday’s deadline expired. “To go through a two-month playoff run you need depth and we feel like we’ve addressed what we needed to address.”
The four additions push others down the lineup or out of it, which is what it takes to create great depth. A shutdown defenseman such as Erik Johnson, Jack Johnson or Ryan Murray could be a healthy scratch when Sam Girard returns, but healthy and available when called upon. The same is now true for forwards Nicolas Aube-kubel and Darren Helm when Lehkonen and Cogliano report — even before Landeskog recovers from knee surgery.
Sakic and his staff appear to have done much better this time around. Before the 2021 trade deadline, the Avs reacquired forward Carl Soderberg and defenseman Patrik Nemeth, and also added goalie Devan Dubnyk. Soderberg was a healthy scratch in the playoffs, Nemeth was a liability and Dubnyk didn’t play.
The four latest new guys will play. They will help this team try to win the President’s Trophy for the second consecutive time and make Colorado a much deeper team than a year ago when they lacked physicality in the second-round playoff series against Vegas. The Golden Knights overcame a 2-0 series deficit to win it in six games.
“We wanted to get tougher to play against. After that series, that was the one thing that we felt we could do a better job of, and hopefully, we addressed that this year,” Sakic said Monday.
The Avs’ Stanley Cup-or-bust approach is costly for the future. They lost their top two defenseman prospects, Drew Helleson and Justin Barron, both 20, in the trades for Manson and Lehkonen, respectively, and lost a combined three draft picks over the past week.
The Avs are now running thin on draft picks. They have traded away their selections in the first, second and fourth rounds in 2022, their second and fourth rounders in 2023, and their second, third and fifth rounders in 2024.
In June, fans will find out if it was worth it.