When you think of the top head coaches in all of the NHL, I think most—if not all—fans and analysts would consider Jon Cooper of the Tampa Bay Lightning at the very top. As a fan of the Colorado Avalanche, it would be awesome to be able to rank Jared Bednar up there near the top. That being said, where does he actually rank?
NHL.com has recently put out rankings of the league’s top 16 head coaches, and yes, Cooper takes that top spot with 230 points (the explanation for the point distribution is in the article itself). Paul Maurice of the Florida Panthers and Bruce Cassidy of the Vegas Golden Knights round out the top three on the list. Jared Bednar comes in at the eighth spot with 148 points.
Being named even a top-10 head coach in the NHL is nothing to be ashamed of. I mean, everybody has their rankings and opinions, and it’s definitely possible that some have Bednar in their own top five. That being said, the fact that the Avalanche have not been back to the Stanley Cup Final since their cup-winning season is a good reason to have him as “low” as they do on NHL.com.
Had Gabriel Landeskog and Valeri Nichushkin been around (on the ice) more often than they were and had the Avalanche still put up the same exact outcome with those two in the lineup, I think that Bednar definitely would be a little bit lower.
Bednar has helped the Colorado Avalanche battle adversity. He and General Manager Chris MacFarland brought in players at the trade deadline and despite someone like Yakov Trenin leaving after just one year, preparing for the future is something that is definitely in the minds of the general manager, and Bednar is going to be around for the long haul.
The Avalanche extended Bednar’s contract through the 2026-27 season, and there hopefully will be no signs of him losing the team’s focus and going through a rebuilding stage, especially with several contract extensions that have either already happened or are in the works as we speak.