The Colorado Avalanche will gladly take any advantage they can to climb up the Central Division standings. They just got some great news way ahead of the 2025-26 season, as the rival Dallas Stars moved on from head coach Pete DeBoer on Friday morning.
Rumours started heating up about the move shortly after the Stars were eliminated by the Edmonton Oilers in Round 2 of the Stanley Cup playoffs. The Stars had won the first two games in the series but dropped four consecutive. DeBoer had lost three consecutive conference finals and the Stars have had enough.
So, what does this mean for the Avalanche? Firing a head coach can result in one of three things: The team will either be worse than they were the previous year, have the same result as the year prior, or they can be better. It’s really as simple as that.
Like the Avalanche, the Stars are in salary cap hell right now. They have just $4.96 million, the third-lowest in the league right now. Colorado is dead-last with $1.2 million. If things stayed the way they are right now (they won’t), neither team would be able to sign a high-priced player in free agency. The Avalanche are surely going to make a couple of moves to free up cap space. In the Stars’ case, they’ve got just 16 of 23 roster spots taken up. Colorado has 19 of 23.
Dallas is likely going to lose several key players, such as Mikael Granlund, Jamie Benn, as well as former Avalanche Matt Duchene. They also have to make a decision on defenseman Cody Ceci.
I feel like the Avalanche might have made a mistake by signing Brock Nelson to a contract extension with an AAV of $7.5 million. While they clearly like him enough to sign him for an additional three years, they’ve got work to do to make up for the salary cap situation. Unless they sign several players to contracts worth the league minimum for veterans ($775k), they’ve got themselves in a tough position.
That being said, it could take the Stars some time to get accustomed to whoever they name as head coach. The Avalanche hope that whoever it is won’t succeed right away. As far as I’m concerned, the move by the Stars gives the Avalanche the opportunity to be firmly in second place in the Central Division. That’s all they need to do. The icing on the cake would be that Winnipeg takes a step backwards, allowing the Avalanche to become the top team in the division. However, with a superstar goaltender in Connor Hellebuyck, I do not see that happening.
The Avalanche can only control what they can control. As long as they take care of business as much as possible, they’ll surely climb the standings at least by one spot next season.