Colorado Avalanche and Their Reclamation Projects
The Colorado Avalanche have a history of trying to rekindle the careers of fading youngsters
Diamonds in the Rough
With Jonathan Bernier, Colin Wilson and Nail Yakupov joining the team this off-season, the Colorado Avalanche have added three more former first round picks whose careers haven’t been what their original team hoped for. Enter Colorado, which hopes to polish these players into regular contributors
It’s become a recurring theme for the franchise, with decidedly poor results.
The team has tried many times to squeeze blood from stone since the rebuild era began in 2009. Peter Mueller, Jordan Caron, Brandon Gormely and Mikhail Grigorenko are all names that leap to mind as reclamation projects the Colorado Avalanche have undertaken. Some of them were promising but fell apart. Some were in pieces before they ever arrived. None of them have been what management hoped for.
Yet they keep trying. If there’s one bit of consistency in recent years, it’s that the Avalanche have relied on a reclamation project to come in and fill a void in the top of the lineup.
With Yakupov, at least, the mentality appears to be intact.
Igor Larionov, Yakupov's agent, also said Sakic sees Yak as a top-6 winger
— Igor Eronko (@IgorEronko) July 4, 2017
There’s nothing inherently wrong with reclamation projects. They do become problematic when a team depends on them as much as the Avalanche have. Hopefully the front office continues to try and wring production from low cost players, only in secondary roles rather than important ones. Bernier and Wilson seem to fit this mold rather nicely.
For now, there’s nothing to do but wait and see what Wilson, Yakupov and Bernier do for the Colorado Avalanche, and hope their results are better than what we’ve see so far.
This first pair didn’t set the bar very high.
Pointless
Jordan Caron and Brandon Gormley were just about pointless additions. I mean that literally, they scored a combined 1 assist for the Colorado Avalanche. Both guys were 1st round picks in the 2009 and 2010 drafts, respectively, two pretty strong draft years. A lot of players have gone on to impressive NHL careers from those two classes.
These two, unfortunately, are not among them.
Caron
Jordan Caron had a good junior career, a theme that will play out again and again. His better than point/game scoring and selection to the 2010 Canadian World Junior team convinced the Boston Bruins to take him with the 25th pick in the 2009 draft. He had a respectable start to his career, scoring 7 points in 23 games in 2010-11 and doubling that to 15 points in 48 games the year after. He could never replicate that success though, tailing off to 3 points in 17 games the next year and 0 in 11 games in 2013-14.
But Caron was big and had connections to the QMJHL, so the Colorado Avalanche gave him a shot. In March 2015, they traded Maxime Talbot and Paul Carey to Boston for him and a 2016 6th round pick (Nathan Clurman), and former coach Patrick Roy started him in the top 6. He didn’t score a point in 19 games and became a UFA after he wasn’t qualified.
Caron had another 4 games with St. Louis in the NHL the next season, but spent all of 2016-17 in the AHL.
Gormley
Brandon Gormley was the 13th overall pick in 2010, and seen by many as a can’t miss defensive prospect. He had an impressive junior career, being named to the Memorial Cup All-Star team and the best defenceman in the 2012 WJC. His touch continued into the AHL, where he scored 29 and 36 points his first two years, looking to be well on his way to a strong NHL career.
But it never materialized.
Personally, I remember being shocked that the Arizona Coyotes let him go in the fall of 2015 for former can’t miss Avalanche prospect Stefan Elliott. Gormley seemed to have all the tools to be a decent NHL defenceman, but he never impressed Roy enough to get a regular chance.
He played 26 games, registering a single assist, and spent most of the time watching from the press-box.
The team placed him on waivers in early 2016, and sent him to the minors awhile after he cleared. He has since signed with the New Jersey Devils, who traded him to the Ottawa Senators for basically nothing. His last look at the NHL came with the Avalanche over a year ago.
Verdict
Two promising looking youngsters never really worked out for the Colorado Avalanche. In a combined 45 games, Gormley registered the lone point these two contributed.
Though these two certainly didn’t work out, they didn’t cost much for the Avalanche to acquire. However, the fact that they were ever considered part of the solution speaks to this franchise’s desperation to add talent to a depleted base without breaking the bank.
Sometimes you get what you pay for.
Hit the Post
The next pair are guys the Colorado Avalanche almost, but not quite, scored with. Mikhail Grigorenko and Peter Mueller were slightly more successful with their new team. But not a lot.
Both were top notch prospects in their draft years, and both carried some excitement when they came to Colorado. Neither are in the NHL anymore.
Grigorenko
Mikhail Grigorenko tore up the QMJHL, putting up impressive point totals on the way to winning the Mike Bossy Trophy in 2012 as the league’s best prospect. Despite his scoring prowess, questions about his competitiveness dogged him, and he slipped to 12th in the draft, where the Buffalo Sabres scooped him up.
His time is Buffalo was… strange. He bounced between the NHL, AHL and the QMJHL for three seasons, never really breaking through.
The Sabres seemed poised to give up on him. His former coach wasn’t. Like Caron and Gormley, Grigorenko was a tall player from the QMJHL, so Patrick Roy and the Avalanche thought he was worth a shot.
Grigorenko, of course, was part of the package for Ryan O’Reilly and Jamie McGinn. He had some incredible moments, but the same doubts regarding his commitment carried over into his pro career. After putting up 27 and 23 points in his first full NHL seasons, the Colorado Avalanche made the questionable move not to qualify him.
Related Story: Wrong to Let Grigorenko Go
He’s now signed to play in the KHL for the next two seasons.
Mueller
Peter Mueller may actually be the gold standard for Colorado’s reclamation projects. He was a better than point/game player in the USNTDP and the WHL for a combined three seasons before bursting onto the scene with a 54 point rookie campaign with the Phoenix Coyotes.
That’s better than anyone on the Colorado Avalanche managed last season.
His production tailed off in his second season, then plummeted in his third year, down to 17 points in 54 games. The Avalanche saw something in him though, and pulled the classic ‘change of scenery’ gambit. Mueller came over with Kevin Porter for Wojtek Wolski in March 2010.
And he lit it up, to the tune of 20 points in 15 games. It looked like the Avalanche found a top notch right winger to complement their stable of young centres.
Then this happened.
How prescient the broadcaster’s words turned out to be. Rob Blake destroyed Peter Mueller.
He missed the rest of that season, all of 2010-11 and most of 2011-12 with concussion symptoms. Not surprisingly, he never re-captured his form, and was released from the Avalanche in 2012.
Mueller tried to make a go of it with the Florida Panthers, but he couldn’t stop from washing out of the league. He still plays though, scoring at a pretty good rate in the AHL last season.
While this move didn’t pan out for the Avalanche, the much more important story is Mueller’s. Yes, it’s unfortunate Colorado didn’t get their player, but that’s nothing compared to the kid’s lifelong dream ending because he didn’t check his shoulder one time.
Verdict
Grigorenko and Mueller are the epitome of ‘what could have been’ for the Avalanche. There was so much talent and potential there, but, for very different reasons, it just never worked out for them in Colorado.
They scored a combined 86 points for the Avalanche, but just weren’t able to keep their grip on an NHL roster.
Conclusion
The Colorado Avalanche have tried, and basically failed, to fix their holes with reclamation projects. They’ve pursued a number of former 1st rounders in need of a new team and most have washed out rather than fix anything. You could argue that Semyon Varlamov and Erik Johnson are successful projects, but their careers had never really stalled the way the guys listed here had.
All in all, the Avalanche have taken their chances on these low risk-high reward guys, and they aren’t about to stop. Not this season anyway. With Yakupov, and to a lesser extent Wilson and Bernier in the fold, management still hopes to find the diamond in the rough.
One of them has to pan out soon. Doesn’t it?