With the Colorado Avalanche entering the offseason with many questions to answer, we will see some things change. Once the season begins, there are some things that we will keep an eye on.
The team cannot currently sign many players with their horrible salary cap situation, so they’ll probably be in need of doing some things they would have preferred not to.
The structure of the roster is not currently what it will look like during the time that teams are required to be at the roster maximum. Unfortunately, even with the salary cap increasing, the Avalanche are still in trouble, but they can get out of that trouble with various moves.
Here are some difficult decisions the Colorado Avalanche have to make.
Is Gabriel Landeskog ready to make a bigger impact this season for the Colorado Avalanche?
Gabriel Landeskog made an amazing return to the ice in the postseason after three seasons away from head-to-head play. He played in two games with the Eagles before his official postseason return to the Colorado Avalanche. He passed the eye test, in my opinion, but ideally we would have liked to have seen more. That would have happened had the team defeated the Dallas Stars.
Landeskog is already ramping up his workouts to prepare for the 2025-26 season. We have seen how hard he has been working to get back onto the ice, thanks to his docuseries throughout his recovery from the devastating knee injury.
There is a major factor at play when it comes to Landeskog. He has a $7 million cap hit, and if he ends up not performing well, the Avalanche really couldn’t put him on LTIR unless there is some sort of issue with his knee (or another injury for that matter). The Avalanche are in salary cap hell with just $1.2 million and have several roster spots to fill. That number will increase though once the team trades someone to free the space up.
Even with the salary cap rise in 2025-26, the Avalanche need to figure something out to free up space. I know this is a huge long-shot, but the reality is that trading Landeskog is technically a possibility. The Avalanche could trade him to a team such as the Hurricanes, Bruins, or Sabres, just to name a few.