Colorado's Offseason Bets Are In. Now They Have to Pay Off.

The foundation is set. Cale Makar, the most expensive player in the history of professional hockey at $20.4 million per year, has explained his reasoning, embraced the pressure, and committed eight more years to Denver. Nathan MacKinnon put up 83 points last season. Martin Necas added 61. The superstar core is real, it is intact, and on paper it is the envy of the Western Conference. None of that is what keeps me up at night about this team heading into October.

What keeps me up is a number I've been returning to since Vegas ended Colorado's season in the cruelest possible way: zero. That's how many goals Ross Colton scored on 29 shots across the final ten games of the regular season. Nearly three shots a game, zero results. The captain himself converted just once on 25 attempts over that same stretch. These were not flukes of bad luck in a single bad game. This was a systemic finishing drought that ran through the roster's secondary layer, and when Colorado carried it into the playoffs against a Vegas team that punishes hesitation, the Avalanche blew a 2–0 series lead and lost four straight. Chances were not the problem. Conversion was.

Management's response was aggressive and, to their credit, direct. They traded Nichushkin — a right wing who had underperformed when it counted — to Columbus, then used the cap room to bring in Jaden Schwartz on a three-year deal, add Georgii Merkulov on a one-year contract, and sign Zach L'Heureux. The theory is sound: layer in secondary forwards who can finish, diversify the goal-scoring burden, stop asking MacKinnon and Necas to carry a conversion crisis by themselves. Boston gave up on Merkulov; Colorado is betting that was a mistake. The Nichushkin pick became Egor Shilov at No. 43, a long-term signal that the front office is thinking beyond this window even while patching the immediate one.

The problem is that the most important of those additions is already compromised. Schwartz has been sidelined since shortly after signing, with no clear return timeline as training camp approaches. That is not a minor footnote. He was brought in specifically to address the secondary scoring gap, and right now he is unavailable. The contingency signings — Merkulov, L'Heureux — are exactly that: contingencies. They may prove to be inspired gambles. They may not. The margin for error on a team built around the most expensive contract in NHL history is not wide enough to absorb a major addition sitting out the early season.

Here is the historical parallel that matters. The 2010s Chicago Blackhawks dynasty ran into this exact structural tension repeatedly — a superstar core locked up at enormous cost, a supporting cast that had to be rebuilt on the margins every summer because the cap left no room for certainty. When the depth held, they won Cups. When it didn't, they went home early despite elite top-line production. Colorado is not yet in that position structurally, but the playoff collapse in Vegas was a warning shot. Elite regular-season teams that cannot convert in the postseason don't fix the problem by adding the same type of player at a lower price point and hoping for better results. They fix it by finding forwards who have demonstrated they can score when the game slows down and the checking tightens. Whether Merkulov or L'Heureux are those players is genuinely unknown.

My read is this: the Makar extension was the right call, full stop. A multiple Norris Trophy winner who plays 24-plus minutes a night and drives play the way he does is worth every dollar of a record contract. But the extension is also a declaration of intent — Colorado is in championship-or-bust mode for the next eight years, and every offseason decision will be judged against that standard. The roster moves this summer were necessary. They were also incomplete, partly because of Schwartz's injury and partly because secondary scoring depth at playoff-caliber is hard to acquire cheaply. The Avalanche are betting that enough of these additions will click to solve a problem that cost them a series they were winning.

That bet may pay off. But Colorado's history in this era has been one of regular-season excellence meeting playoff variance, and variance tends to punish teams whose conversion problems are structural rather than situational. The Makar money is committed