The Colorado Avalanche should give chances to their AHL talent for the remainder of the season.
To say the Colorado Avalanche are struggling would be an understatement. The team has been dead-last in the NHL for about a month now. They are far more likely to win the Nolan Patrick sweepstakes than a playoff spot.
The old cliche is that there’s still plenty of hockey ahead of the team — they’re just nearing the middle of their season. However, conventional wisdom states that standings don’t radically change after Thanksgiving — or maybe Christmas this year because of the delayed start. After that it’s just jockeying for position.
Now, as we saw last year, teams can drop out of the final Wild Card spot — Colorado did it. It’s also technically possible that the Avalanche could go on a Columbus Blue Jacket-esque winning streak and be back in playoff contention. I mean, they get everything else from Columbus…
We should probably just acknowledge that the 2016-17 is a bust for the Colorado Avalanche. Or, rather, it’s a bust as far as playoff contention goes. Besides jockeying for a high draft position, the team can still do something important with this season.
The Avs can use the time to analyze the young talent they have coming up from the AHL. These players are the future of the team, so it would be nice to give them some NHL time now. This means these young players can start getting a feel for the speed and intensity of the world’s best hockey league.
Not only that, the young prospects can even start developing some chemistry with the current Colorado core. It’s possible a big name or two could be traded (though I doubt it). Nonetheless, it would still be valuable experience.
On the flip side, it allows the front offices and coaching staff to evaluate which players might really have NHL legs.
And, hey, why not? What have we got to lose? Hockey games, sure, but the Avs are already losing those.
So, let’s look at five players on the San Antonio Rampage roster that Colorado should call up.