Valeri Nichushkin’s move from Colorado to Columbus is more than a change of address. It’s a window into how much the Avalanche have shifted since their 2022 Stanley Cup run, and Nichushkin made that point plain when he called Colorado “one of the oldest teams in the league.”
Speaking with RB Sport, Nichushkin said he still hasn’t fully wrapped his head around the trade.
“Honestly, I haven’t had time to think about it yet,” Nichushkin said. “I stayed in America because of family circumstances, and then when I came to Russia, I was getting settled.”
After seven years in Denver, the move will mean starting over in a lot of small ways.
“I knew every street,” he said. “Now everything will be new.
I’ll have to find a new place to live. But there’s nothing terrible about it.
I’ll adapt.”
Some people have framed the deal as a clear downgrade for Nichushkin because Colorado remains a Stanley Cup contender while Columbus is still working to become a consistent playoff team. Nichushkin didn’t exactly reject that idea, but he did push back on the assumption that the gap is as wide as it looks.
“At first glance, perhaps it looks that way,” he said. “But on the other hand, Colorado is now already one of the oldest teams in the league.”
He followed that up with a direct comparison to the team he knew during its title run.
“When we won the Cup, we were in the top five youngest teams,” Nichushkin said.
That contrast says plenty about where the Avalanche are now. Nathan MacKinnon, Cale Makar and the rest of the veteran core are still elite, but this is no longer the young, flying group Nichushkin helped carry to the top of the NHL.
Even so, he wasn’t ready to write off Colorado’s future.
“There are very good players in Columbus, a good balance,” he said, pointing specifically to Zach Werenski and Kirill Marchenko. “And that's how it happens in the NHL: a couple of trades - and everything can change very quickly.”
Nichushkin’s perspective carries weight because he was such a big part of Colorado’s championship push. In the 2022 playoffs, he scored nine goals and six assists in 20 games as the Avalanche rolled to a 16-4 run and won the Stanley Cup. He also played through a broken foot late in that postseason.
His overall playoff line with Colorado ended at 27 goals and 13 assists for 40 points in 74 games. In his final regular season with the Avalanche, he had 49 points, including 17 goals and 32 assists in 72 games, then added four points in 12 playoff games.
Colorado traded Nichushkin to Columbus on June 25, getting a second-round pick in the 2026 NHL Draft, a third-round pick in 2027 and a fifth-round pick in 2028. That 2026 second-round pick later became Egor Shilov.
For Nichushkin, the move also brings a different kind of opportunity.
“There is an opportunity to get a more interesting playing role there,” he said.
And for Colorado, his comments are a sharp reminder that championship windows don’t stay open forever. The Avalanche still have the kind of talent that keeps them in the conversation, but the roster Nichushkin remembers from 2022 is long gone.
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