The Colorado Avalanche were eliminated from postseason contention after their Game 7 loss to the Dallas Stars in the first series. Since then—heck, even much before that—many fans were calling for the jobs of general manager Chris MacFarland and head coach Jared Bednar. To me, it felt pretty crazy. I just didn’t think that it was very possible the team would do that.
I will still say that I wasn’t a fan of shipping off some high draft selections as well as draft prospects in Calum Ritchie and William Zellers. It hurts knowing that those two players were part of what we gave up to acquire Brock Nelson and Charlie Coyle, among other things.
Appearing for media on Tuesday afternoon were MacFarland and Joe Sakic, to take questions about their past season and what some of their views are going forward with this team. Some things, fans won’t be a fan of, but that’s normal. One of those things is the status of head coach Jared Bednar. MacFarland assured the room and Avs Nation that “100 percent, Jared (Bednar) is our head coach.”
There were a lot of things that went against Bednar and one of them was the fact that so many players were injured all year. The other thing that does link to the injuries is the fact that the Avalanche had more call-ups from the AHL than any other team in the league. That means new players coming in and learning with the Avalanche players, a lot of who were there way before. It makes things tough, especially chemistry.
It also makes sense because, despite failing to reach the Stanley Cup Final round in each of the years since winning it all, Bednar has led the team to the postseason every year and still only had one playoff-less year in his career with the Avalanche.
I’m not sure how the 2025 NHL Draft is going to go, but one thing that does frustrate me is that the Avalanche don’t have a first round pick. In fact, they only have two total selections right now: a fourth-round and a seventh-round. That’s not good for a team who traded away some young prospects and needs help for the future. It’s a concern for me, but maybe MacFarland has something up his sleeve to help put those worries to rest. I sure hope so.
That being said, the NHL draft is on June 27-28. That’s plenty of time for some other things to go down if they are going to. With Colorado out of the playoffs, they are free to trade with any other team who is also not currently taking part. Will they pull the trigger? Who knows. We’ll cover all of that here at Mile High Sticking if it does.
Colorado Avalanche fire assistant coach Ray Bennett
One thing that did change on the team’s coaching staff was the firing of assistant coach Ray Bennett. Bennett served as the team’s power play coach.
In case you don’t know what really happened on the power plays, or most of them, this season, it all can be summarized with one word multiple times: “pass, pass, pass.” That’s what Colorado continued to do game in and game out on the power play.
It really had no chance of working. When you spend 30 seconds passing the puck around trying to create a look, you’re wasting previous time on the man-advantage. I can’t tell you how many times I got upset at my tv because the team wasn’t shooting the puck 5-plus times on a power play. That sort of thing had to end and it cost Bennett his job.
It wasn’t always bad for the team’s power play, but despite the Avalanche finished high in the power play rankings, it wasn’t enough to keep his job.
Hopefully the Avalanche find someone much better to do the job.