Colorado Avalanche: 3 Winger Choices for the First Round
The Colorado Avalanche might use the #16 pick in the 2018 NHL Draft to choose a winger. Here are their top three choices.
The Colorado Avalanche have the #16 pick in the 2018 NHL Draft. GM Joe Sakic has stated he’ll use that selection on the “best player available.”
As I keep saying, I hope the plan is to pick the best player available for need. If that’s the case, the Avalanche are sure to pick a winger.
Right now, Colorado has a lot of players who play all three forward positions. For true wingers, they had seven last season. Of those players, three might not return.
That’s not to say that the player Colorado chooses at #16 is going to make an impact this upcoming season. Even their last two #10 picks, Mikko Rantanen and Tyson Jost, didn’t make that impact right after they’d been drafted.
However, as you look down their depth pool, you see that in addition to the three they might lose this season (Blake Comeau, Matthew Nieto, Nail Yakupov), they could lose another five from their depth pool next summer:
- AJ Greer
- Julien Nantel
- Andrew Agozzino
- Sven Andrighetto
- Gabriel Bourque
I suspect they’ll re-sign Greer and Nantel, but they could also be career AHLers.
So, that leaves the Avs with the following natural wing depth:
- Gabriel Landeskog
- Mikko Rantanen
Yeah. That pool gets shallow after the first line.
Colorado needs to start adding some talented forwards who are natural wingers to augment the players who line up at all three forward positions. Here are three options ranked by how much I like them for the Colorado Avalanche’s #16 selection.