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NHL Power Rankings #25: Colorado Avalanche
The Avalanche are not as good as they were back in 2013-2014. That said, they also aren’t as bad as they were last season. In my opinion, they are somewhere in between. However, a playoff run isn’t completely out of the question for them since they have a borderline elite goaltender in Semyon Varlamov. A Vezina run from him wouldn’t surprise me too much.
I really like Colorado’s top two forward lines. Jarome Iginla is still awesome, even if he is less awesome than he once was. Alex Tanguay is underrated because he’s a selective shooter, but I appreciate guys like him. It’s a nice change of pace to high volume shooters like Iginla was in his prime. Nathan MacKinnon is a forward who I covet.
I’m not a fan of Colorado’s bottom six forwards or their blue line. Francois Beauchemin was an alright signing, but I hate signing defensemen past the age of 34 and they should have pursued Cody Franson instead, in my humble opinion. I’m not huge on Blake Comeau since most of his success came with Evgeni Malkin and elite centers tend to make players look a lot better than they actually are. He’s a fine third line guy, but going from Malkin to Carl Soderberg is quite the dropoff.
Colorado’s top forwards and Varlamov give them enough for me to consider them “contenders.” However, they will need a number of things to go right for them if they want to make the NHL playoffs.
Next: #24