Strike 2: NHL Draft: June 27-28.
It’s draft season for three of the four major sports. The Denver Broncos finished theirs in April, but the Denver Nuggets, Colorado Avalanche and Colorado Rockies are all prepping for their sports selections day(s).
The Avalanche finish to the past season would have landed them the 22nd selection in the first round of this week’s NHL Draft. Instead, the Philadelphia Flyers hold that pick.
Not that the Avs appear to want to bother much with selecting amateur talent anymore anyway.
Like their counterparts at Ball Arena, the Avs brass – for the last decade that’s been general manager-turned-team president Joe Sakic and assistant GM-turned full-time GM Chris McFarland running things – after having built a core with draft picks like Nathan MacKinnon, Mikko Rantanen and Cale Makar – have turned away from using draft picks to select players and instead have traded most of them away for veterans to try to fill holes in the roster.
Not that they’ve shot and scored with the majority of their first-round picks in the past decade anyway. You thought the power play percentage in the playoffs was low.
Tyson Jost, Martin Kaut, Justin Barron, Oskar Olausson and Mikhail Gulyayev have been first-round picks that followed Rantanen since 2015. They did pick Bowen Byrum and Alex Newhook, but traded them both away. Cal Ritchie – the 2023 first-round pick – was traded to the New York Islanders this season after playing in just seven games with the Avs.
There’s not much left to show for those top picks. Instead the Avs remain pleased that they got center Brock Nelson and another couple veterans to fill in around their core prior to the trade deadline when they also traded Rantanen. More of these kinds of moves appear to be the full time plan until such time as MacKinnon and Makar are former Avs.
This year’s top pick was sent to Philadelphia mostly to get rid of Ryan Johansen but also to obtain Sean Walker, who left as a free agent after last season. So like the Nuggets, the Avs are currently slated to be mostly spectators during the upcoming draft. They still have two picks, but they’re in the fourth and seventh rounds. Doubtful they’ll find any difference makers then. And that will be the case again next year at this time, when they don’t have a first rounder again (sent to the New York Islanders in the Ritchie deal) and just a pair of fourth rounders, three fifth rounders and three seventh rounders.
Don’t be shocked to see any number of those late round picks get traded away, too.
The Avs have been successful doing it this way, so don’t expect it to change. And don’t expect any thrills on draft night.
