The Offseason Fixed the Wrong Problem

Joe Sakic spent the summer solving Vegas. He traded Valeri Nichushkin, brought in Jaden Schwartz, added Georgii Merkulov and Zach L'Heureux — a full surgical strike aimed at the depth-scoring failure that ended Colorado's playoff run. The Avalanche then went 57-28 and finished with a +1.21 goal differential. By any reasonable measure, the offseason worked. Except it didn't work the way Sakic drew it up, and that distinction is going to matter enormously when the playoffs arrive.

Here is what actually happened: Colorado allowed 1.6 goals per game over the final 10 games of the season, down from 2.8 in the prior 20. That 1.2-goal-per-game swing is what drove the 7-3 closing stretch, not a suddenly productive depth group. The defense didn't just improve — it became the team's primary scoring instrument, in the sense that suppressing goals replaced generating them as the path to winning. Makar's 55 points in 48 games anchored that structure, Burns finished at +28, Malinski at +24. The blue line carried this team to the finish line while the forwards it acquired to fix things largely watched from the perimeter.

The depth-scoring problem didn't disappear; it just stopped mattering as much once the defensive structure tightened. One veteran forward generated nearly three shots per game over that final stretch and scored zero goals across 29 attempts. Zero. That is not a slump — that is a portrait of a group that created chances and couldn't convert them, which is precisely the same diagnosis Colorado carried into this offseason from Vegas. The names changed. The condition did not.

What makes this genuinely complicated is that the formula worked well enough to win 57 games. The 14-15 record in one-goal games — a number I keep returning to — tells you the secondary scoring failure had a real cost even in a strong season. That's a 48% win rate in the tightest games, against a team that won 67% overall. When Colorado couldn't pull away, when the game came down to a depth forward making a play in the third period, they lost more than they won. That gap doesn't close by itself in a playoff series.

The depth chart reinforces the concern rather than quieting it. Behind Artturi Lehkonen on the left wing, the drop is steep and immediate. On the right side, the backup options behind T.J. Hughes offer similarly thin production. At center, Nicolas Roy and Fedor Svechkov are both well below what a contributing NHL starter should provide at that position. These are structural holes, not depth quibbles. Victor Olofsson, who gave Colorado some wing production last season, has since returned to Vegas. The roster entering next season is thinner in those spots than the final standings suggested.

My read is that Sakic now faces a harder version of the same question he faced last summer: how do you add secondary scoring to a team built around elite possession and a dominant core? The difference is that this time the defensive structure is real and proven, which changes the math slightly — Colorado can win games 2-1 in a way they couldn't before. But playoff hockey compresses everything. Opponents adjust, top lines get checked harder, and the depth group gets exposed in ways the regular season doesn't demand. The Avalanche won 57 games by finding an alternative to fixing their problem. At some point, they still have to fix it.