The Colorado Avalanche already did not have their first-round pick in the 2026 NHL Entry Draft, and now, they have shipped out their 2027 first-round draft pick for center depth.
News broke Thursday morning that Colorado traded that pick to the Toronto Maple Leafs for center Nicolas Roy.
Roy is a 29-year-old who was the 96th overall pick in the 2015 NHL Draft by the Carolina Hurricanes. He spent just two seasons in Carolina before going to Vegas to play for the Golden Knights for six seasons. Then he found himself with the Leafs.
Roy has found some steady ice time over the past couple of seasons after seeing just seven games in his first two years, while he did not have a goal during that short span.
The four seasons prior to the 2025-26 season, Roy had double-digit goal production.
Roy will come into the Avalanche organization as a bottom-six forward. Colorado already has their top-2 center spots taken up. We’ll see if they trade away someone else but right now, he looks like he’ll be their fourth-line center.
With the Avalanche trading away their first-round pick for Roy, I think the hope is that he will be able to fill in at a greater role than just the fourth line. Trading away that first-round pick for a fourth-line center just doesn’t sit well with me, but maybe there is something else he can contribute to.
He is a big forward, standing at 6’4” and 200 pounds, so that will add plenty of physicality to the Avalanche’s bottom-six. You’re not exactly looking for the bottom-line players to score, so anything you can get is just a bonus.
I have a feeling that the Avalanche aren’t quite done in the trade department. According to PuckPedia, Colorado has $6,778,605 in current cap space. They have plenty of space to do something else, but don’t rule out them sending out a player to make room for something bigger.