The Colorado Avalanche’s Central Division rival Nashville Predators keep winning the division. Can the Avs overthrow them?
For the second straight season, the Colorado Avalanche‘s rivals, the Nashville Predators won the Central Division in the Western Conference.
While the Preds pretty much ran away with the division crown in 2018, the 2019 race for the Central came down to the last week of the season. Nashville edged out Winnipeg and eventual Cup champs St Louis in the three team chase for the division. Looking ahead to the 2019-2020 campaign, the Central Division looks to have two other teams in the mix to take the crown. One of those teams being the Colorado Avalanche.
Colorado has obviously made a lot of moves over the off season to add some depth scoring to the lineup. The Avs traded for Andre Burakovsky on June 28th, sending 2020 2nd and 3rd round draft picks to Washington. On July 1st the Avs signed free agent, Joonas Donskoi to a 4 year/$3.9M AAV contract, re-signed Collin Wilson to a 1 year deal, and signed free agent center, Pierre-Edouard Bellemare, to a 2 year/$1.8M cap hit.
Just when we all thought Joe Sakic was done adding depth for the day, the big trade happened. The Avs acquired Nazim Kadri and Callie Rosen from the Toronto Maple Leafs in exchange for Alexander Kerfoot and Tyson Barrie. Along with Barrie and Kerfoot, other key players from the 2018-2019 season that will not be in an Avs uniform this season include Carl Soderberg, Patrick Nemeth, and Semyon Varlomov.
With these moves made to improve the scoring depth, the Avs have a very good chance to take the division for the first time since the 2013-2014 season. But there is still one other team in the Central that I believe can get in the Avs way — the Dallas Stars.
The Stars made a big splash this off season by signing Former San Jose captain, Joe Pavelski to a 3 year deal worth $7M per year. Dallas also went out and signed Corey Perry and Andrej Sekera to 1 year contracts. Pavelski will be a big help for the stars power play and will provide leadership and playoff experience to a team that is also on the rise, like the Avalanche.
More from Mile High Sticking
- Could Colorado Avalanche move on from Pavel Francouz next offseason?
- 4 goalies to replace Pavel Francouz if he has to miss time
- Colorado Avalanche make sneaky signing with Tatar
- Colorado Avalanche captain Gabriel Landeskog could return in 2023-24 playoffs
- Colorado Avalanche rookie face-off tournament roster
The reigning Central champs traded away star defenseman P.K. Subban to the New Jersey Devils to clear up some cap space to sign former Av, Matt Duchene. It was no secret that the 28 year old center has been attracted to the Predators for some time now. Duchene is a big country music fan and also plays a pretty good guitar himself.
The Predators have had Duchene on their radar since Joe Sakic was looking for the right trade partner for Dutchy back in 2017. Duchene brings loads of talent to the Preds center depth and makes them that much deeper in the lineup.
So what do the Avs need to do to overthrow Nashville? First off they need to stay healthy. We now know that Ian Cole is likely to miss at least the first month of the season after have surgery on both hips. Erik Johnson is also questionable to be in the opening night lineup following his shoulder surgery after the playoffs.
The Avs have the depth at the defensive position to fill those holes at least until the two get healthy. But the forward core needs to play 75-82 games to be able to win this division and get home ice advantage in round 1.
Colorado also needs to win the season series against divisional opponent. This is one of the best ways to ensure that they can are in contention for that division crown.
Goaltending needs to be solid and not have a dip like it did in the middle of last season. Philipp Grubauer needs to be the number one goalie that he was in the playoffs and show it for an entire season. He has never had an entire season as a starting goalie, so we all need to hope he takes this opportunity and runs with it all the way to a division title and further.
Lastly, Colorado has to have much better home record than they did last season. If the Colorado Avalanche can improve their home record by 10 wins and get to 31 victories at he Pepsi Center, there’s no doubt that they will be in the running to grab home ice in the first round of the playoffs.