Love ‘em or hate ‘em, the Los Angeles Dodgers are that kid at Christmas that gets every single thing he wrote down on his Christmas list. They lack for absolutely nothing.

And all of a sudden, after a trade-deadline flurry, that kid at Christmas is Colorado Avalanche head coach Jared Bednar. After some serious wheeling and dealing by the Avs’ front office, Bednar now has everything any coach could ever wish for in terms of what makes up a Stanley Cup-winning roster. There can’t be any excuses anymore. It’s time to simply wipe out all those puny small-market teams. Yeah, we’re looking at you, Dallas.

The Colorado Avalanche are officially the Dodgers of the NHL. Start making those parade plans. No sense waiting until the last minute.

Make no mistake, the Avs were already the NHL’s best team, with the best record and best roster in the sport before Avs president Joe Sakic and general manager Chris MacFarland went to work and re-acquired center/winger Nazem Kadri, brought in defensemen Nick Blankenburg and Brett Kulak (a veteran of three of the past five Stanley Cup playoffs) plus former Las Vegas standout center Nicolas Roy, who helped the Golden Knights win a Cup in 2023.

An embarrassment of riches? That won’t be official until the franchise starts stacking Stanley Cups… but at this point, it should be pretty much a given.

For example, Kadri was a critical member of the Avs’ 2022 Cup-winning squad before leaving as a free agent. Early that season, you could have made an argument that he was the Avs’ best player. He finished the regular season with 87 points and did his best work in the postseason, including a hat trick in the Western Conference second-round series against St. Louis.

After spending the past three-plus seasons as a member of the Calgary Flames, he’s now back in Denver, and was immediately inserted into the lineup with the first line, filling in for the injured Gabe Landeskog on the wing. He can play center or wing, giving the Avs a decided edge in depth over nearly anyone they face off against.

Kulak assisted on a Roy goal in the pair’s second game with the Avs…like they’d been here the entire time.

Any way you look at it, Colorado now has everything they need, and then some. So it’s fair to say that if they don’t win the Cup now, heads will need to roll, right? Will these additions, assuming they can continue to fit in seamlessly, be enough to secure the team’s second Stanley Cup in the past four seasons? Is it enough to get them past their arch-nemesis, the Dallas Stars, in the rapidly approaching Western Conference playoffs?

It sure should be.

The pressure is now squarely on Bednar to produce a second Stanley Cup championship as the Avalanche head coach. Unless they suffer a couple of catastrophic injuries to key players, there’s no reason they shouldn’t cruise to another championship. The front office has done its part. Now it’s up to Bednar and the players to turn all the ingredients they’ve been given into a gourmet meal.

Or else?