The construction of this Colorado Avalanche team began in 2006. That’s when the cornerstones of the new age Avs began being laid. But when you look at the foundation of Colorado’s current team you notice one glaring issue – an extreme lack of drafted and developed defensemen.
Patrick Roy and the Avalanche kick off the 2015-16 campaign tonight against the Minnesota Wild at the Pepsi Center. While fans are excited about the year to come, the prognosticators don’t have a rosy outlook on Colorado’s season. That’s because, as Zach Fogg pointed out yesterday, it’s a team full of question marks.
With their abundance of offensive talent, traditional thinking would tell you that scoring shouldn’t be a problem (although the preseason would tell you otherwise). It’s time for Matt Duchene, Gabriel Landeskog and Nathan MacKinnon to prove that that is true. This is a make or break season for that group.
But, Colorado’s biggest problem isn’t offense; it’s defense. The defensive issues played a huge role in the team’s downfall last season and unless something changes dramatically they’ll be an issue once again.
It’s pretty easy to figure out why Colorado is in such a defensive lurch.
This franchise has neglected building the defensive core in the same way they’ve successfully built the offensive core, through the draft. They’ve instead relied on stopgap free agency fixes, which have yielded little success. This can all be traced back to 2006.
Side note – 2006 is the last draft that still has fingerprints on this roster.
Since 2006, Colorado has invested 13 picks in the first four rounds of the draft on defensemen. Only one of those players made the final 23 this season, Tyson Barrie. That’s a bad average for a franchise trying to build through the draft.
The best defenseman drafted in the last nine years was Kevin Shattenkirk who now plays for a division rival. To be fair, Shattenkirk and Chris Stewart, Colorado’s 2006 first round pick, turned into Erik Johnson via a trade. Johnson is by far Colorado’s best defenseman, but don’t forget that when that trade was made many felt that Shattenkirk had reached his ceiling. Well, since then, he’s become a candidate for the Norris Trophy year in and year out.
That’s a big misjudgment in talent evaluation. The problems didn’t stop there.
Cameron Gaunce, taken in the second round in 2008, only played 11 games for the Avalanche and is now in the Florida Panthers organization.
In 2009 Colorado used their two highest picks on forwards – Duchene and Ryan O’Reilly – then their next two on defensemen – Stefan Elliot and Barrie. Barrie has been great, but Elliot is another second-round pick playing for another organization.
In 2011 Colorado selected Duncan Siemens with the 11th overall pick. Entering his fourth season, Siemens has played in only one game for the Avalanche. He is entering the category of complete bust. And the excuse of being young no longer applies to Siemens. For comparison, he is two years older than Nikita Zadorov and was selected five picks higher. Zadorov is expected to log big minutes for the Avalanche this season; Siemens didn’t make it out of training camp.
Colorado used their 2012 first-round pick to help acquire Semyon Varlamov, but they also didn’t select a single defenseman that year.
Then comes 2013. The Avalanche used the first overall pick to select MacKinnon and passed on highly touted defensive prospect Seth Jones. In the second they selected defensemen Chris Bigras who has never suited up for Colorado.
On and on and on, the pattern is clear. Colorado has either passed on defensive prospects in the draft – that includes the first round in 2014 and 2015 – or completely missed on the players they’ve taken. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why they’ve been forced to pin their hopes on names like Brad Stuart and Francois Beauchemin. They don’t have anyone else.
The brain trust at the Pepsi Center has loaded the Colorado Avalanche with offensive talent. Arguably, they have more hotshot forwards than they know what to do with. But, what they don’t have is young, talented defensemen and it could once again cost this team a season.