This proves the Avalanche are ALL IN...

The Colorado Avalanche are the third oldest team in the NHL. Can they win a championship with almost the same roster from last season? The championship window is currently open, but how much longer will it stay that way? Welcome to Avalanche Digest. I'm Copeland Jones. Before we get started, just want to remind you guys we'd love to see if y'all can subscribe. We appreciate it very much. 80% of you are not subscribed. It's completely free. And if you're looking for daily updates on the Colorado Avalanche, we will have that here. We have three creators on this channel, and we'll be putting out content, especially with the season coming up in less than a month from now. Thank you very much. Let's get right into things. So there was a post by Daily Face Off. Shout out to them. Great account on Twitter to follow. They do a lot of podcasts. They do a lot of articles covering a lot of hockey teams. And they did a interview slash podcast with Jesse Montano, Montano, sorry if it's pronouncing correctly from Gorilla Sports. Shout out to our old creator, Mark Robinson, who works over there. But we're going to get into what was said on that podcast, and we're going to look a little into this Avalanche core. So here was the first thing. So their their main host says it wasn't a busy summer for the Avalanche, but we already have 11 forwards and six defensemen that was signed before the offseason even started with McKenzie Blackwood locked up for the future. The core is going to be together for the foreseeable future. But is that a positive or a negative? This is a team who even with their ages for the next two to three years, they're going to be able to go on consistent runs and kind of keep this momentum going. So the question is, is are we going to keep up the momentum? Or are we going to dial it back since everyone's getting a little bit older? And just Jesse Montano had something to say about this right after that. So it's funny. He said it's funny to him. Sorry. It was shocking. And for the ABS this past season, which it really was with all the injuries and everything, but took a step back. And usually at the end of seasons, you start dissecting the roster. But after this year, almost everybody came back. I know we lost a bit of that fourth line due to the trades and the Harlem leaving and McFarland wanted all of his fourth line and third line guys back. But the ABS didn't trade for rentals to win it that season. They traded for term guys. So they're trying to keep the championship window open. So Nick Law, Nazem Kadri, Arturi Lekanen, Arturi Lekanen, he was a guy that we signed for a rental and then ended up extending him after we won the cup. He is probably the back end of the core just because of the fact that he is the one with an expiring contract this season. Nick Law as well. I wouldn't really consider Nick Law as part of the core just because he doesn't really crack that top six. And I mean, he does occasionally whenever there's injuries, but he's not really a part of that. Whatever I think of core, I think of your top six wingers and your top two defensemen. That's what I think of core. But they made, Jesse Montano says here that they should try and re-sign Arturi Lekanen. I don't disagree that it wouldn't be a bad idea to bring him back. I just also don't know if bringing him back again rather than going after younger talent is the best idea, but you know, we can agree to disagree. So we're going to look over a bunch of the players on the apps, how they did last season, how they've done in seasons past, and if relatively, I think there's going to be a decline in any of their seasons or performances or not. So first off is our main guy, Nathan McKinnon seven, Nathan McKinnon, you know, he's our superstar. He's our main guy. He's fantastic. So we're going to look at his stats from last season. From last season, 80 games played, 127 points, 53 goals, 74 assists, a plus minus of plus 57. Pretty incredible. Even a 51% faceoff win percentage. If you know, he's struggled with that in the past sometimes. So pretty impressive, 350 shots, which I believe was the second highest in his career. So definitely top one, two, three, winger, center forward, whatever you want to say in the entire league. Literally it's him, Kucherov, and McDavid always at the top of those three are on the podium. So we can look now back at his season stats over the last few years. So four straight seasons of a hundred plus points, and I don't think that's going to slow down, especially he's only 31, which is like your peak age. This is where you start to see maybe a decline or you see they kick it into a second gear. So I'd like to see at this point that McKinnon's going to keep maintaining that a hundred point pace right there because in 21, 22, he should have gotten to a hundred points. Didn't play in 17 of the games, 2020, 2021 shortened season could have gotten there as well. 1920. He was really close. Didn't play all the games. 18, 19. It was the last, or it was a full season. He played, he got 99, one point off. So McKinnon, oh, and 97 the year before. So McKinnon realistically could almost have had eight or nine consecutive seasons of a hundred points. If everything was every game played and not a shortened COVID season, but McKinnon, I'd like his consistency. He's been on an upward trend. He did kind of fall back on that one 16. The goal scoring wasn't there as much, but the goal scoring was there this year and that was fantastic already. So now we're going to look at our next person. Our next person is Brock Nelson, Brock Nelson. I include him as part of the core just because he did put up some monstrous goal numbers this year. And I didn't expect that from a guy who is 33, 34 years old this season. So let's take a look at the season stats from Brock Nelson. Although I will say from Brock Nelson, almost every single one of his goals that was scored was prior to the Olympic break. So 33 goals, 32 assists, 65 total points. He had a 50.4 face-off win percentage. Not bad. 186 shots, 18 power play points. I feel like he was pretty solid on the power play on the top unit, but once they removed him, I felt like that kind of took away at some of his opportunities that he had to score goals. And that's why we may not have seen so many on the back half of the season. So it doesn't show when he switched teams here, but it was that 24, 25 season. But if you take a gander, he didn't really start turning up the goal scoring until he turned about 29 or 30 years old, and he has sat right around 30 every season since. If he can keep that 30 up, he's going to look great. We just need, the big thing the Avs need is for Brock Nelson to figure out how to show up in the playoffs. Brock Nelson has been a playoff ghost. That's exactly who Quinn Hughes has been seeing from the bench. He's been seeing the ghost of Brock Nelson. But Brock Nelson needs to figure things out. He needs to learn how to score. I feel like the more he plays with this team, the better he is going to get with the system. Although he did have a whole season to figure it out, and it still didn't work. I think maybe that some of those guys are gone now. Maybe push him to play a little more wing every now and then. It might boost him to score some more goals in the playoffs. Or at least dish out a few apples. At least contribute. He did have a lot of good effort in the games, but he had, what, two, three empty net goals in the playoffs, and one real goal, and that was about it. He may not have even had a real goal, I don't even remember, because he was such a passenger this last season. Next thing here is Nazem Kadri. Nazem Kadri is the next guy. He was part of our core in 21-22 when we won the cup, and he is there now. So the interesting thing about Kadri is his stats from last season were not that great. 16 goals, 34 assists, 77 games, so he played almost everything. That faceoff percentage wasn't that good last season, and I know the Avs always used him, and Kadri's the faceoff guy. He always gets kicked out of the faceoff, but he's known as the faceoff guy. That minus 30, most of that is mostly from playing with Calgary, but he did not end up with a positive result with the Avs. Didn't play that many games with us, the playoffs, he was okay, he was dealing with a hand injury, but he was okay. So the goal scoring there in 24-25 was actually his career high right there. Kadri is in his 35-year-old season right now, so he is on the older end. I think he's going to regress a little bit. I don't think he's going to regress from the 16 goals he had this last season. I think he is going to regress from his 35 that he had two seasons ago. So I don't expect him to get 30-35 goals, I expect maybe 20-23-24 this season. I think that would be a good spot for him, especially if he's going to be flipping between the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd line. Alright, so next we have our other winger on our top line, that would be Marty Natchez. Marty Natchez was taken in that Rantanen deal, we got him from Carolina, and he just had a career year last season. It was his best year across all metrics, basically. He got 100 points on the dot last season, played 78 games, got a game off on the last game of the season. 38 goals, 62 assists, plus 47, faceoff win percentage, doesn't matter, he's a right winger. Not really going to put him at center, but 206 shots, 24 powerplay points, he was pretty good on the powerplay. I liked him on the powerplay, but when him and McKinnon are on the powerplay together, I feel like it doesn't mesh well, because they both like to drive the powerplay, and it wasn't looking good having two conductors on the same panel. But looking at Natchez's career stats, he never really had great, great point seasons before this, and he is 27 years old, so he's like getting into his prime, and we have him locked up for 10 more years, or something, or not 10 more years, sorry, that's dumb of me to say. We got him locked up for 6 or 7 more years, but 100 points, that's his career high, had 83 and 71 the other times around, but not quite 100 points. You can see that this last season was an outlier, I think, honestly, he may only get better from this point. Natchez is still a young guy, and he's going to feed off of guys like McKinnon and McClark, and the leadership of Landis Gogh. Landis Gogh, fantastic player, love Landis Gogh so much, but he's going to digress just a little bit as well. He's a part of the core, just from a leadership standpoint, but he's going to play a lot of third line this season, I'm sure. He's going to switch between second and third, but him and Schwartz are probably going to be switching in and out on that left wing side, but Landis Gogh, great leadership guy for the team. I mean, you can't help but love him, he's a great guy, but... Killmacar is up next, our $20 million man. Killmacar, one of the best defensemen in the league, arguably THE best defenseman in the league, and he's still growing, he's still becoming a better and better player every day, and that's hard to fathom, considering how great he has already been thus far. Last season was a step down from his previous two seasons, but still a great one, 79 points, 20 goals, 59 assists, plus 32, 116 blocks, almost 200 shots, 29 power play points. Not that many power play goals this last season. Power play goals was a little bit down, but here's his last few seasons on this list. 79 this last season, 92 and 90 the years before that, but he's been pretty fantastic. The power play goals only at 4 this last season hasn't been that low since 2020-21, when he was just brought up in his rookie and sophomore season. Killmacar is going to be a big part of if this team is going to work in the playoffs this season. His health immediately affected the Avalanche against Vegas, you could tell. Whenever we were missing him, and he was dealing with that shoulder injury after the Minnesota series, and then McKinnon went down, those two players are so detrimental to the success of the Avalanche, that whenever one of them goes down, or both of them are only playing at 50%, the entire team is affected. It's not saying that we're only leaning on those two guys, but our whole offense is built around them, so whenever one of them is out, you've got to change everything up, and things get confused. Last player of the core, who is still locked up, and our other defensive guy, Devon Tayes. Yes, Tayes has been a solid defensive partner for McCar, been a top 10-15-20 defenseman in the NHL for the last three seasons or more. Devon Tayes has played really well along McCar, although he has gone a little downhill over the last couple of seasons. I don't think he's out of the realm of possibility of having a breakout season where he gets a ton of points, but this last season was a little rough for him. 68 games played, 24 points was all he got, 3 goals, 21 assists. From your top-line defenseman, you kind of expect at least 40-50 points, because you're going to be on the ice with the top line all the time, you're going to be passing it around, but he just wasn't getting the apples this year. I don't know what it was, only one power play point, he's only on that second unit. He did get a couple of goals in the playoffs, if I'm not mistaken, and he looked pretty solid in some games, but some of those playoff games were a little rough. Here are his last few seasons, 32 years old as a defenseman, so he is kind of coming out of that career peak right there. A little bit lower on the time on ice per game this season. Played 68 games, which is on the lower end of the games he's played in a single season, or right in the middle of that, actually. Had 10 goals, 34 assists last season, 44, kind of sat around 50 for the four seasons prior to that, but dropped down to 24 this season. I want to see him bounce back with 35, 40, maybe even 50 points this next season. Hopefully the power play being better will help with that, and the top line meshing well together. I'd like to get a solidified top line, because it's been mixed around a little too much. But Devontae is a great part of this team. He does play really good defense, but there are just, sometimes, and everyone has them, he has an off day. And you can notice on the days that he's off, that our defense really falls apart. He is a key piece of our defense, but he's not the only part of our defense. So if Devontae, he's a part of our core, that if he's gone, it doesn't hurt us, like, it's not like a stab wound, but it's like, it hurts. It hurts when he's not there, so he is a big part of the defense for the Avalanche. So, let's answer the questions we asked at the beginning of the video. Can the Avs win a championship with this team? Absolutely, the Avs can win a championship with this team. They've done it in 21-22 with a similar squad, just a little bit younger. The average age of the 21-22 squad was 28.2 during the regular season, and it was like 27.6 during the playoffs, whenever they made the trades at the trade deadline, and, you with this roster, they showed that they can make it with almost the exact same team last season. I know everyone's a year older, but everyone's playing with each other again, so they know exactly how each other work, what things to improve on, so on and so forth. Do I think the championship window is closing? I think if we re-sign Lekkonen and don't go after younger talent, of course that window is closing, because the longer you stay with the same group, those guys are going to get older, they're going to get tired, they're going to get moved around, they're, I mean, it's just fatigue starts to settle in, especially with guys like Landis Gogh and Brock Nelson and Kadri, who are going into their 35, 36, 37-year-old seasons. It's just, it's really hard to upkeep that high of a level of hockey, and the only people that have really shown evidence of playing really well into their late 30s or even 40s is Alex Ovechkin and Jager, so I don't know exactly if we're going to get top-tier play from all three of those guys, but I still think their leadership qualities will help benefit this team in the long run, so thank you very much for watching, we appreciate everything y'all do with subscribing, watching the videos, commenting, all the above, but thank you very much for watching, we appreciate you, and I'll see you next time. Don't forget to subscribe.