Nazem Kadri is heading into his 18th NHL season, and the raw numbers from 2025-26 make it easy to jump to the wrong conclusion.
He’s coming off a year in which he scored 16 goals and finished with 50 points after posting a career-best 35 goals in 2024-25. He’ll turn 36 just a week into the 2026-27 season. For a lot of players, that kind of drop-off starts to look like the first real sign of decline.
But Kadri’s season deserves a second look.
One of the biggest clues is his shooting percentage. At 7.5 percent, it was the third-lowest mark of his career.
The only two seasons in which he finished lower were 2015-16 and 2021, when he shot 6.5 percent. In both of those years, he bounced back with major offensive rebounds.
That makes last season look less like a permanent slide and more like a mix of poor puck luck and circumstances he couldn’t control, including playing on a team that was selling.
The situation around him mattered, too.
When Kadri returned to Colorado at the trade deadline, the Avalanche already had their top six in place. Brock Nelson had the second-line center job, while Valeri Nichushkin, Gabriel Landeskog, and Artturi Lehkonen were occupying key wing spots.
Kadri did work his way into better opportunities and eventually landed on the top power-play unit, but he was never walking into a setup that was built around him. His ice time showed that.
This season should be different from the start.
Kadri will go through training camp with the Avalanche from Day 1, which gives Jared Bednar the chance to shape the lineup with Kadri in mind instead of trying to squeeze him in after the fact. Like fellow trade acquisition Nic Roy, he’ll also have a full offseason to settle back into the organization, and he should once again be a regular penalty killer after handling that job well during his first stint in Colorado.
Just as important, last season’s depth chart doesn’t have to control this one. Everyone starts fresh.
If Kadri proves he’s the right fit to center the second line, he’ll get that job. If he earns more offensive chances, those should follow. The Avalanche aren’t going to make decisions based on the role he inherited after arriving in the middle of the year.
That’s why it’s hard to treat 2025-26 as the baseline.
Kadri probably isn’t going back to a 35-goal pace. But expecting him to rebound from 16 goals is a lot more realistic than assuming his offense has vanished. A better shooting percentage, a full training camp, and a clear role from the outset should be enough to lift him well beyond last season’s goal total, and the same logic applies to his points.
He’s 36, so the later stages of his career are here. That much is obvious.
But the decline talk looks premature.
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