Better luck next year: The Colorado Avalanche made big changes ... and they're complicated

They sort of worked. They sort of didn't work. They are now facing an extremely difficult offseason.

Welcome back to Better Luck Next Year, a series that will focus on each team as they get eliminated from Stanley Cup Playoff contention and the Stanley Cup Playoffs. What went wrong, why it went wrong, what (if anything) went right, and what is next. We continue today with the next team to be eliminated from the Stanley Cup Playoffs: The Colorado Avalanche.

When the Colorado Avalanche won the Stanley Cup in 2022 they had pretty much every possible ingredient you could want for an NHL team. They had top-tier, world-class superstars. They had depth scoring. They had an incredibly deep defense. They had competent goaltending. There really wasn’t a weakness anywhere on the roster, and they steamrolled over the rest of the league by winning 56 regular season games and then 16 out of 20 playoff games, never facing elimination at any point. They were a force, and they looked to be set-up for a run of dominance over the following seasons.

While they have remained a consistent contender, they have not come close to matching the success of that 2021-22 season.

Their regular season point total has regressed each season (if only marginally), they have won just one playoff series, and even though they still have Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar at the top of the lineup the roster is very clearly missing some important pieces around the edges.

The depth was largely decimated from that championship team, and I suspect the Avalanche are/were very, very aware of that given the revolving door of roster transactions that have taken place over the past year or two. That was especially true this season when they opened the Stanley Cup Playoffs with only 10 players in the lineup that were also in the regular season opening night lineup. That is a staggering amount of in-season turnover for a Stanley Cup contending team, and illustrated just how frantically management was working to try and find the right mix of players to complement their two superstars.

They swapped out both goalies, traded Mikko Rantanen, and added Martin Necas, Jack Drury, Ryan Lindgren, Brock Nelson and Charlie Coyle to the roster in an effort to balance things out.

It sort of worked.

It also sort of didn’t work.

And all of it might be leaving Avalanche fans with a very big “what if” question going into what could be a very difficult offseason.

Let’s talk about it.