Colorado Stopped Waiting on Schwartz. Now Comes the Hard Part.

Jaden Schwartz has been out since early July, and his return timeline is still unclear heading into training camp. I wrote in August that Colorado wasn't standing still while they waited — and the L'Heureux signing on August 22 confirms it. At $875,000 per season, he costs almost nothing and adds the kind of physical edge the Avalanche were missing when Vegas ran them out of the second round.

The problem is that edge and secondary scoring are not the same thing. The depth crisis that sank Colorado last spring was specific: a forward who generated nearly three shots a game over the final ten games of the season and scored zero goals on all of them. That void — 29 shots, zero conversions — is what the Schwartz signing was supposed to address. Georgii Merkulov is still here, and he gets his shot to prove Boston wrong, but the front office is now building a depth-forward plan that has to function without its centerpiece.

MacKinnon, Necas, and Makar will produce. That was never the question. The question is whether Merkulov, L'Heureux, and whoever else fills those bottom-six minutes can convert enough to keep Colorado from running into the same wall next spring. My read is that the Avalanche have added character to the roster without yet solving the finishing problem. Training camp will tell us whether that's a gap they can live with or one they still need to close.