Joe Sakic has built a roster loaded with high-end talent, but the Avalanche’s latest wave of contracts has made the rest of the job a lot tougher.
That reality sharpened last week when Colorado handed Cale Makar a record extension. Once that deal begins in the 2027-28 season, the Avalanche will have $65.254 million of a projected $113.5 million salary cap tied to six players: Makar at $12.604 million, Nathan MacKinnon at $12.604 million, Martin Necas at $11.5 million, Devon Toews at $7.25 million, Brock Nelson at $7.5 million, and Gabriel Landeskog at $7.0 million. That works out to 65 percent of the cap.
For Sakic, that leaves very little room to miss. Colorado still has to keep its contention window open through the prime years of its stars, but now the margin for error is razor-thin. With nearly two-thirds of the budget spoken for, the Avalanche will need production from places that are usually asked to do a lot less.
The upside is obvious. As Sakic put it, “ You need superstars to win.”
And Colorado has them. MacKinnon remains the best player not named Connor McDavid, while Makar is still the NHL’s top defenseman.
That kind of elite talent is usually non-negotiable for teams chasing the Cup. The source material points to only a few recent champions that got there without a true superstar: the Carolina Hurricanes in 2026, the St.
Louis Blues in 2019, and the Los Angeles Kings in 2014, though Anze Kopitar came close. Of the last 10 Cup winners, including the Avalanche, those are the only three teams that didn’t have a certifiable superstar on the roster.
But stars alone don’t finish the job. Depth has to carry real weight, too, and Colorado is already making that balancing act visible. To make the contract picture work, Sakic had to move on from Valeri Nichushkin, Ross Colton, and Jack Drury.
That’s the part of roster building that usually decides whether a contender survives the grind. The superstars draw the attention and take the heavy lifting, but the depth pieces are the ones who often swing the biggest moments. The recent champions have all had them: Taylor Hall for the Hurricanes, Anton Lundell for the Florida Panthers, Ivan Barbashev for the Vegas Golden Knights, and Ondrej Palat for the Tampa Bay Lightning.
Colorado has found a few of those useful pieces before. Artturi Lehkonen has been an impactful addition.
Logan O’Connor has become one of the league’s most valuable depth forwards. Parker Kelly is coming off a career-high in goals.
Sam Malinski played so well that he forced Sam Girard out of town.
Finding stars is hard. Finding the right support around them, and keeping everyone under the cap, might be even harder.
Sakic has already shown he can do plenty of that work well. If he can do it again and bring another Stanley Cup back to Colorado, it would only add to what is already a Hall of Fame legacy.
In Other News...
Avalanche Still Carry One Big Playoff Question After Another Brutal Exit
Nathan MacKinnons scoring burst last season was one of the biggest reasons Colorado spent the year near the top of the league, with the Avalanche riding that production to the Presidents Trophy before the playoff picture turned sharply in the wrong direction. They had the regular-season resume of a contender and the continuity of a team built to keep showing up in April, extending their postseason streak to nine straight years, tied for the longest active run in the NHL.
Still, the manner of the exit lingers. Colorado was swept by the Vegas Golden Knights in the Western Conference Finals, a result that put the Avalanche in a rare and uncomfortable place as just the second team in league history to be swept after winning the Presidents Trophy. Betting sites still expect them back in the playoffs next season, but the bigger question is whether that regular-season dominance can finally translate when the games tighten and the margin shrinks. [Read more 🡒]
Avalanche Face A Lehkonen Contract Issue Fans Cant Ignore
Artturi Lehkonen has become one of the Avalanches most reliable two-way wingers since arriving in Colorado, and that makes his contract status more than a routine front-office note. President of hockey operations and general manager Joe Sakic said talks on a new deal could stretch into the regular season, which at minimum keeps one of the teams most important pending decisions hanging over the start of the year.
Lehkonen is entering the final season of his five-year contract, and his value to Colorado is easy to measure in the moments that have mattered most. He has been a steady presence in both the regular season and the postseason, including key goals during the 2022 Stanley Cup Playoffs, so the Avalanche are dealing with a familiar kind of pressure point: a player they clearly trust, a market that knows it, and an unresolved contract situation that may not disappear anytime soon. [Read more 🡒]
Gavin Brindley Just Made Colorados Camp Battle A Lot More Interesting
Gavin Brindley has already turned a routine camp competition into something the Avalanche have to watch closely. The 21-year-old forward, acquired from Columbus, got into 56 NHL games last season and showed enough in spurts to matter, scoring multiple goals and even delivering game-winners before his year took another turn. Colorado still has him under contract after the two-year extension, so there is both short-term roster intrigue and a longer-term investment in a player whose game seems to keep moving forward.
Brindleys path also says a lot about why this battle feels different from a typical depth-chart exercise. After an injury, he went down to the AHL affiliate in Loveland and still found a way to help in the playoffs, keeping his season alive and his case for a spot on the big club intact. With camp approaching, the question is no longer whether he has made himself part of the conversation, but how far he can push it when the Avalanche start sorting out the roster for the new season. [Read more 🡒]