Bednar Stays. The Roster Around Him Doesn't.

Jared Bednar got his four-year extension on Tuesday, and Andrew Cogliano moved into the assistant GM chair a day earlier. Joe Sakic is locking in his people — the coach who won him a Cup, the player who helped deliver it. Hard to argue with either call on its own merits.

The timing is just a little awkward. The same week Colorado committed to its coaching staff and front office structure, the forward group it spent the summer assembling was falling apart. Zachary L'Heureux, Logan O'Connor, and Georgii Merkulov are all unavailable. Cale Makar is out. The depth chart at right wing and center — thin before any of this — is now genuinely bare. Nicolas Roy remains the nominal starter at center, and the right wing situation behind O'Connor was already a problem Sakic never fully solved.

Bednar is a good coach. Cogliano is a smart addition to a front office that may need to move quickly in the coming weeks. None of that is the issue. The issue is that continuity of leadership only matters if there's a roster to lead, and right now Colorado is asking Bednar to coach around holes that existed before the injuries and are worse because of them. The structure Sakic built this offseason was meant to give the elite core — MacKinnon, Necas, Makar — enough support to avoid another Vegas situation. That support is currently on injured reserve.

The next few weeks will tell us whether this is a rough camp or the beginning of a longer problem. Bednar's extension says Sakic believes in the plan. The injury list says the plan needs to survive contact first.