2024 NHL Draft might be critical for the Colorado Avalanche’s future

The Colorado Avalanche have seven selections in the 2024 NHL Draft. They have one in the first round, and then they are without a selection in rounds two and three, followed by a pick in the fourth round, two picks in the fifth round, one pick in the sixth round and two in the seventh.

It will be important for the Avalanche to hit on several of these selections. Oftentimes, it seems as though teams select players and those players don’t ever end up playing a single minute for that team. They end up signing with some other league, and sometimes even eventually head elsewhere in the NHL.

The Avalanche have several spots of uncertainty going forward, headlined by Valeri Nichushkin and Gabriel Landeskog’s status. They will have to start drafting players to eventually potentially take over for at least one of those two players. My bet is that it would be Landeskog. He’s 32 years old and hasn’t played in two years because of his bizarre injury he suffered in the Stanley Cup Playoffs during the team’s last Stanley Cup victory.

No, I’m not saying that I 100 percent think that Landeskog won’t play another game for the Avalanche. I’m suggesting that the team starts the process of replacing him just in case things don’t get better. It takes players a couple of years to even sniff NHL ice, and by that time, Landeskog will be closer to the end than the beginning.

Ideally, some players from the Colorado Eagles continue to make an impact for the Avalanche in 2024-25. Riley Tufte, Nikolai Kovalenko and Chris Wagner are three guys who I expect to have a bigger impact in the next level with the Avalanche in 2024-25. The team has high hopes for all of them.

This team has a couple of holes right now. The best thing for the Avalanche is to continue to add players through drafts to develop them and hopefully they will make a big impact at the highest level of the sport.