🔴Colorado Avalanche 2025 Offseason Review 🏒 Fanatics View Hockey Show
Welcome to another edition of the Fanatic View Hockey Show. My name is James Lynch. Really excited to be joined by my next guest. You’ve seen him over there at Mile High Hockey. He is covering the Colorado Avalanche. He’s been at training camp uh since the start of the uh I guess preseason or whatever you want to call it, the start of the uh the 2025 2026 season. Happy to be joined here for the very first time by Ryan O’Hara here on the program. Ryan, how are you? Hey, doing great. Thanks for having me on, James. And how are you doing? I’m doing I’m doing awesome. Not everyone asks how I’m doing, so I I appreciate that. Um, yeah, I mentioned it there. You’ve been at camp. Uh, we’ll obviously get into some of the offseason stuff as well, but, uh, you know, you you’ve been on the, uh, you know, at the rink pretty much every day. I see all your, uh, you know, your posts up there on Twitter and everything else you’re doing. Anything stand out so far to you as we’re sort of at the early part of training camp right now? Well, I mean, I guess the I guess the first part I I would mention is that, you know, Nathan McKinnon is Nathan McKinnon, he treats every practice like it’s a real game. um you know provides a lot of leadership for the for the younger players. And so when you see Nate out there ju just grinding and look looking like like where he’s playing in the Stanley Cup finals or any other playoff game, you know, it sets a good example for everyone else. Gabe Landiskog, he’s looking really sharp. Jack Drury’s coming into a contract season. He’s really, you know, been grinding this off season. And um you know, these are optional skates. A lot of people are like, “Well, where’s so and so?” Well, you know, it’s not not it’s not not a mandatory skate, but um you know, Brent Burns has also been out here nearly every day. You know, he took finally took a few days off last week, but you know, well deserved, but the team’s looking really strong right now in my opinion. Well, what do you think it says as well with so many players doing this optional skate? Like I I didn’t even realize that because it looked like there were a lot of players out there on the ice. So, um you know, I I know there’s a bit of if I had to guess, a bit of a you know, sour taste in the mouth with how things ended last season. there were a lot of expectations uh when the ABS, you know, obviously made some moves to the deadline. Um is is that sort of leading into that where they’re like, “Look, we we got to cover every base here and make sure that we can go farther in the playoffs.” Yeah, I think so. I think definitely when you look at the fact that the Stars were missing a lot of their top players and they were still unable to, you know, capitalize on it. I don’t think it’s I It’s like a combination of a few things. It was like I would say the power play wasn’t very good. But if you look at the 2022 Avalanche, we were missing Darcy Keer for a bit. We were missing Sam Gerard. We were missing Cadri. And we were still able to win the Stanley Cup in in 22 and go 16 and four. It really spoke to the depth of the avalanche that season. And I think it goes to to show that the Dallas Stars had amazing depth last season as well to cover all the bases. And yeah, you know, it was a good series. I thought Dallas deserved to win it. Um, personally, I said that on a on a Tik Tok video that, you know, the ABS kind of beat themselves and, you know, Dallas is was just a really deep team. So, that’s that’s that’s basically what happened to me. Yeah, it was uh yeah, it was and then obviously a very tough Western Conference. I mean, some people felt like that could have been the final with obviously the, you know, the very first round for the for the ABS there. Um, a lot going on. Now, uh, looking looking to the offseason, this is kind of what we wanted to talk about. I know not a ton going on for the Avalanche, right? They obviously made the trade with Columbus. Uh they they get rid of um you know coil and and wood which you know kind of across the board I think everyone thought that was a great trade for Colorado to shed some salary and and all that as well. You bring in Brent Burns. I like that signing from you know getting a veteran you know more veteran leadership in there. I think there’s still some upside for Burns in terms of what he’s able to do at his age. Um and then I think the big thing that you know I think was really their biggest move was resigning Brock Nelson. If you look at you know how many teams are in need of a second line center. I know Nelson maybe not the pickup um you guys wanted at the deadline as far as his production, but um you have to be pretty satisfied I would think with what the ABS have done even though they didn’t make a lot of moves. Yeah, I think resigning Brock I mean I was initially kind of against signing resigning Brock just because how much we had to give up. we kind of had to resign in a sense because we know we don’t want to go through the whole, you know, argument of, you know, oh, we needed two we needed 2C and we’ve been writing 2C stories for quite some time now. But when you look at how much Dallas paid to to resign Matt Duchain for what 82 points he scored last year and how much we paid Brock Nelson, it seemed like that we overpaid to get Brock. But the fact I guess in a sense it’s okay that we overpaid to get Brock just because we we can just have that 2C locked down. Um, I think we kind of put ourselves in a bad situation by making so many trades that just didn’t pan out, you know, forking over a lot of draft picks. And on one hand, yes, like you you want to execute while that Stanley Cup window is still there, but at the same time, you don’t want to give up all of your draft picks and put yourself in a peculiar situation even sooner than you want to. Well, and I think and I was I was going to say too, I think one of the things that you’re going to get this season that’s another addition is getting a full season with Landisk. And you know, by all indications, if we’re just looking at what we saw in the playoffs last year, um, you know, I’ve been reading your tweets on, you know, obviously on on Twitter or X or whatever they want to call it, but you know what I’m saying, like you’ve been given a lot of good updates there. That’s almost like getting an addition this season of having another player there that, uh, you know, can really be an impact for the team. Absolutely. I think having Lannis Scott back for a full for his first full season in three years is going to be fantastic. Um you know this is the captain’s skate and you know he’s out here right now with everyone else. So you know it’s a it’s a great sign um you know that Lannis Dog is as fresh as he is. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And by the way yeah I forgot to mention that you’re actually live right now at practice. So I appreciate you doing this multitasking here which is which is great and I know you’ve been there every day. Um, in terms of like, uh, you know, kind of looking like going into the off season, were there any like maybe names or moves or or you know, players that you were hoping the ABS were going to get or or was this sort of, you know, the best they could do with the climate, which is, you know, I’ve talked about this numerous times on the show, it just wasn’t a lot of action because a lot of teams ended up resigning their players. They kind of with the cap going up and, you know, having all this cap space, they weren’t a lot of teams weren’t able to use it. So, do you feel like um you know, again, we sort of talked about, you know, the ABS sort of being happy with what they got, but were there any names that you were hoping were going to go to the ABS or any anything in the works, you think? I mean, like you said, there there wasn’t a lot of like realistic moves that we could have made. I know that some Az fans wanted to bring Mitch Mner on, but you know, that would have put us in a in a even worse cap cap situation than we already were. So, I don’t I I just didn’t think that was going to happen. And of course, there’s still, you know, the Marty Nature’s ordeal. I don’t know what’s going to happen. We still have a year. So, we still have a year, but you know what what concerned me a little bit and some people, you know, it depends on who who you like as a media, as a journalist or a reporter, but that one report that said that, hey, Natus wasn’t happy when he played with Colorado last season. Someone was and people were like, well, it was so and so that said it. Yeah, okay. But guess who didn’t come out and refute the reporting? I didn’t hear Nate just come out and say that wasn’t true. So, if that’s the case, how can we make him happier? And you know, when I look at it from like uh from possibly Nature’s perspective and maybe even Jack Drury as fans didn’t want to see Mo go. So, you have and the team, you know, I don’t think McKinnon obviously didn’t want to see Mo go. So maybe there were, you know, there was maybe there was tension in the locker room, tension amongst fans. I’m sure Nate just reads, you know, what goes on on social media. He probably didn’t like some of the comments that were said like, why do we have this weirdo, you know, on on this team? We don’t want him. And so he probably didn’t feel very welcome. So that that’s kind of how I looked at it. But if Nature’s can can get over that hump, I think at some point he’s going to be a 100 point um per season player. Um maybe it happens this year. Maybe it happens the next year, but I I think Natious if if we can ensure his happiness some way or another. I think that he’s going to be a big part of this team. Yeah, still very young. Uh on a reasonable rate, obviously he’s going to look for, you know, you know, bit bit of a bump, I would imagine, too. But it’s still a good asset to have whether you keep him or not. It’ll be interesting. And again, it it was kind of a weird trade as well because Miko Ranton’s like, “Actually, I don’t want to play for Carolina.” And that caused a whole issue with them luckily being able to trade him to Dallas and figuring that out, too. So, kind of one of those uh weird weird things that sort of happened there. Um, now as far as expectations for the season, I I think sort of the thinking since winning the cup has been like, let’s keep this going as long as we can with the group that we have. I know there’s been some additions, subtractions, and all that. Um, do do you think this season like the expectation is they got to get out of the first round? Like, do you think, for example, there’s another first round exit, we could see some major changes here and maybe them going in a different direction. If we lose again in the first round, especially to the to Dallas, I think they might fire um Jared Bednar. I think that’s interesting that probably I mean honestly if you keep losing to the same team um and you know they lost to Pete Dbor not not only against Dallas but they also lost to him against Vegas as well a few years back so you know the I I I won’t say that Ray Bennett was necessarily you know what what’s what’s the word I don’t I can you help me out on that I forget the word off top of my head Oh yeah no no worries um uh so you’re referring to to what Um when Ray the assistant coach Ray Bennett was fired in the offseason. Oh, I didn’t even Yeah, I actually didn’t even realize that. Yeah. So Ray Bennett was fired. They they hired Dave Hexl, the former head coach of Oh, Seattle. Oh, I didn’t even know that. Okay, interesting. This is why I got you on. These are little like details that I missed in the offseason. So, there we go. You know, and Hextol, he’s known for having a good power play. The power play um in the playoffs last year was really, really bad. But what fans don’t realize necessarily is that the power play in the playoffs actually hasn’t been good in quite some time. It wasn’t very good against Seattle when we lost in the first round. But the reason why that wasn’t the main story was because of the Nushkin story with um the one girl in the hotel. That that was the main story. And then of course we ran into the same issue again next the next season when um when Nushkin failed the drug test in the middle of the playoffs. So, you know, there’s been a lot of different distractions and whatnot. Um, but finally, you know, they they decided to get rid of to get rid of Bennett. I don’t I mean, I think Bennett needed to go sooner, but I don’t think that he was necessarily the problem in that in that series. You know, I I I I think that, you know, Craig McFarland probably, you know, deserved to to get removed after last season, but, you know, we we we still have him. You know, it’s it’s it’s also an opportunity for for McFarland to redeem himself as well. You know, he’s seen as a genius in in the league and he’s made a lot of great moves, but a lot of the moves that he’s made over the last couple of seasons haven’t made this team better in my opinion. Mhm. Um, you know, trading Bowen Byum, I I get that Byron had some injury issues, but, you know, he he goes to Buffalo, has his first 82 game season, his first full season, um, career highs in every category, and then we get Casey Middlestat for a couple months, and then, you know, he ends up not really being all that good for us. And then we end up trading him to Boston with draft picks for Charlie Coyle. Now, Coyle’s not even with the team, so it just it’s not a good look. Yeah. No, no, for sure. Mind you, I think they would have run into the same problem with Byron later on because even in Buffalo right now, he’s wanting out. They they had that whole issue in the offseason. There was talk of him getting moved. He wants to be the guy, right? And so, he would have never been the guy in Colorado as long as you got Kale Mar and Devont Taves and you know, your your star-studded defense ahead of him, right? So, I think that I think you would have run into that anyways. But looking back, the trade itself for Middlestat, yes, did not pan out very well. In fact, yeah, I even heard now the Bruins are looking about flipping Middlestat himself. There’s some talk about that as they’re looking to, you know, make some changes, too. So yeah, just another one of those kind of weird trades that didn’t really pander at all. We got a couple questions in here. Shout out to our guy John. He says, “I love the addition of Brinley um to to the team. Watched uh Bear Herren’s a couple years ago in Denver. Was impressed. Hopefully he can rehab and get back to 100%.” Um yeah. So John with some abs questions here, which is uh which is awesome. What do you What did you think of Brinley? Yeah. Yeah, we’ll get to that. Yeah, Brinley’s been great. You know, I’ve been watching him over the over the last couple days. He’s been really really good. No complaints at all. Barren has actually been out here as well. He’s out here right now. Um, right now on the ice, we have looks like Cooper Gay is out there. We got Nate, we got McKinnon, uh, Barons. He’s actually right in front of the net as we speak and Sage Weinstein. So, yeah, we’re live literally at the rink watching. Yeah, I know. This is great. Again, I appreciate and I love this like being on the front lines here, which is which is awesome. And love being at the rink, man. I’m a little jealous right now. I’m not being here in my office and not not at a rink right now. Hey, I’m jealous. You got a you got an old school Canucks jersey back there? Oh, I I got a couple of them actually. That’s a Pavo Burray jersey for uh for anyone wondering uh back there. That thing’s uh collector’s item. Um one thing that was big last year and obviously there was the trade made uh was the the goalending switch up which again that was a good trade cuz Gorgiev I don’t even think is signed. I don’t know if he’s even going to play in the league this year. You now have the tandem of Mackenzie Blackwood and Scott Wedgwood. What’s sort of the expectation with that? Cuz you know I think now in today’s day and age you can kind of get away with having like decent goalending. Like I don’t think either are the type that are, you know, you rely on to like get like a 40 save game or whatever, but is is that something that I think is set at this point? It seems like it’s kind of settled with you guys now with the whole mess with Gorgv in the playoffs a couple years ago. Yeah, you know, I think honestly I think it’s a very underrated tandem. You know, Scott Wedgwood is an incredible backup. McKenzie Blackwood is an underrated goalender. I mean, a lot of the and we had a lot of defensive issues last year, not necessarily with, you know, Mar and, you know, and those guys, you know, it was more so towards the third line. So, you know, I’m expecting a good year for both of those guys. And, you know, the addition of Brent Burns having that leadership and that that physicality and grit on the blue line and also just the leadership, you know, the way that he’s been connecting with the younger players. He’s been working with a lot of younger goalenders that are, you know, in juniors in the offseason. So, you know, I’ve seen how he works with younger players and I think it it’s working really well. I mean, he’s he leads by example. Uh, he’s also just a fun guy to be around from what I can tell. So, I think having, you know, having that having having that is is important because, you know, last year it seemed like a lot of the guys were kind of down at the dumps. You know, morale was low. You get Brent Burns there. You know, even if we do have a bad game, you know, at least Burns is going to be there to lift our spirits up when, you know, things aren’t going too well. Um, as far as Gorgiev is concerned, you know, the avenge sevenfold doppelganger, you know, getting rid getting rid of of of ke of of of Keer for Gueorgv was one of the worst mistakes they could have ever made. And, you know, the excuse was is that, oh, you know, we couldn’t we we couldn’t give money. We couldn’t give the money that that Keer deserved. And I don’t think that was the that wasn’t the case. The Avalanche didn’t feel like they needed Keer because their offense was so electric. We don’t need good goalending because why on earth would you go from Darcy Keer, you know, a Vzna trophy contender to a backup goalender for the New York to Sturken? It doesn’t make any sense. Um, and you know, Keer wanted to stay. We knew that. But unfortunately, it I mean, it’s just crazy because for the longest time, the the thing that was holding the Avalanche back was goending. When they had Grub Bower and uh Varlamov, it was they were okay, but they weren’t good enough to get us over that hump. We get Keer for a season and then we decide, nah, we don’t need him anymore. And then we and then we you know McKinnon scores 140 points in the season but we still can’t get over that hump because our goalending is just not there. So yeah that that’s really disappointing. I don’t think we should ever should have gotten rid of Keer. I think Keer was really disrespected honestly when he was with the Avalanche. People not realizing he played most of the season with a damaged eye and still got us to where we were. Um and Pavle Franos did a great job for us and and in relief and honestly I mean I I thought he was deserving of the consm as well. If it wasn’t Mar you could have given it to either France or even Valushkin as well. Um but yeah but the Gorg era was definitely a failure. Um, but you know, we the past is in the past and now we we got to deal with Blackwood and Wedgewood and I think they’re going to do great really good this year. Um, you know, a tandem like this kind of reminds me of Dominic Kosik and Chris Osgood. You got two really good goalenders. Now, I don’t think, you know, Blackwood is on Hosik’s level necessarily, but, you know, he’s up there. You know, I I think that he could potentially be in that upper echelon at some point. Well, I think tanms are important. This is something I harp on all the time in the show is that there’s so many teams that don’t address goalending and then they run into problems. Look at Edmonton. Like they’re still running with Pickard and and Steuart Skinner and and fans are ready to burn the city down because they’re not making any changes. I guess they switched their goalie coach, but it’s just so important. Even Vegas right now, you’ve got Aiden Hill and Schmeid as your backup. Are you feeling confident with that? I know he’ll win a cup, but he’s also a guy I don’t think that’s really um you know, sort of lit the world on fire and and if you look at his numbers in the playoffs, not exactly sort of eyepopping. I’m a bigger fan of the tandemss. I think that makes sense. The Leafs have that too with Stolarts and Joseph Wall. The Canucks, I know people are pissed here in Vancouver about them resigning Demco, but listen, if you can possibly get a, you know, Vzna candidate, Demco, that’s healthy. To me, it’s worth it because those are so few and far between in the league. And Kevin Lankin showed last year for the Canucks that he’s capable of, you know, holding down the fort if Demco does get injured. So, I think there is something to the tandem and and I would agree with you that I think they are underrated because I’ve been a big Scott Wedgwood fan for a while. I know he’s bounced around a bit, but you look at his overall numbers are pretty solid. So, I think this is a a good tandem there for the team. Just a couple more questions, then we’re going to get you out of here. Uh Ryan, really appreciate it. He says, “How does Ryan rate young Bakov? Watched him a few times in the KHL. Uh 923 save percentage is impressive as a 21-year-old.” He’s really good. I mean, I’ve seen highlights of him and his his flexibility, his ability to his cross crease reaction is unbelievable. He reminds me of a young um Babarvski honestly or you know as that one TV network um made a mistake and it was Boob Titsky that that’s that that was epic. But yeah, I think NBA is going to be really good. He was actually here u about a month ago or two. Him and Brent Burns actually took a selfie together when they both arrived in Denver. So he’s been here. Um I haven’t seen him. Maybe I haven’t uh haven’t been aware that he’s here, but yeah. So yeah, I’m really I’m looking forward to seeing what Nbachov can do and hopefully he uh you know sticks with the Avalanche. Um couple quick things for me before we get here. I’ve been doing this this with all the guests uh you know because we’ve been sort of going through every team through the offseason. Are there any teams you think are going to regress this year? The two ones that I look at that I you know whether they make the playoffs or not or just you know maybe fall down a little bit. Uh LA I I didn’t like anything they did this off seasonason. And I think they wasted that money that they could have given to to uh their, you know, the defenseman that went to New York um with with getting Dumblan and Cody Cece. I think they’re going to see some regression. And I would and I hate to say it, John. I know you’re in the chat and I say this every week. I think Winnipeg’s going to regress a little bit too. They they lost dealers. They still don’t have a solid 22 2C. And I still think they overplay Heluck too much. And you talk about and I think Carmy’s a good backup there for uh for them, but they got to play him more. I could see some aggression from Winnipeg as well. any teams for you in the West you see maybe slipping a little bit this season because obviously uh we will see some movement I’m sure maybe not necessarily the West. Um well I can see like you said I can see Winnipeg regressing a little bit because I think they do overplay Hella Book too much. I mean he is a really good goalie but you you got to have a solid backup. Even Marty Broaddor had Kevin Weeks even though he didn’t do very well you know he still he still you know um back backed him up for a couple for a couple games here and there. Well, but uh on the Eastern Conference, I can see the Maple Leafs regressing. Okay. Yeah. Well, yeah. Losing Marner, they never they never replaced him, right? Like Well, losing MNER and then you have an asinine fan base that’s just out of their freaking mind. So, you know, I was talking to someone and he didn’t say um you know which player was, but they told me they knew an NHL player that won a Stanley Cup with a Canadian team and that player who they did not name said that he hated playing for that Canadian team. It was it’s like dealing with the fans was the worst. Like, yeah, we won a Stanley Cup, but it was like if we didn’t win a game, you know, we would, you know, our lives would get threatened. We would get letters in the mail saying how much we stunk. You know, it was that sort of thing. He was like, “We want a cup.” But I mean, 90% of the time we were just we were we were get we got treated terribly and he just couldn’t wait to get back to the States. So, yeah. Yeah. Well, there’s two sides of that. As a Canadian, I can kind of, you know, cuz um cuz cuz I’ll say this like cuz that that’s a big topic right now with Mitch Marner, right? The interview came out the other day that, you know, he’s like people are harassing him and stalking him. And obviously, I don’t condone any of that. Fans are nuts. I mean, we see it in we cover combat sports. We see a lot of that there too as well. But um but but on the flip side, I mean, if you were to win a Stanley Cup as a on a Canadian team, like the the opportunities like you’re the man. Like it doesn’t get much bigger than winning a cup in Canada and especially now like you look at like an Austin Matthews or some of the some of the guys in Canadian markets like they’re getting big endorsement deals because like it’s such a big deal to to be in Canada and to be the man. But you’re right, it does come with that downside where the spotlight’s on you. Every little thing, you know, I you know, they have a hangail in practice. it’s going to be front page on on the news. You know what I mean? Like that’s just how it is. So, I think there’s the good with the bad, but I certainly understand what you’re saying there where players are like like even Matthew Chachuk said this. He’s like, I’m going to go to Florida and like just do my thing and no one’s going to bother me if you know I’m not even front page of the news, you know, like it’s just one of those things. So, did I ever tell you the funny story, but when I was in Montreal on vacation in college? I don’t know if you read the No, let’s hear Let’s hear it. Yeah, go for it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, um I was at it was I think it was 2014 is before the World Cup game before, you know, Germany destroyed Brazil in Brazil. Yeah. But, uh I was talking to this girl and you know, she was just grinning from ear to ear and she was from Montreal and then I decided to pull a prank on her and uh asked her if she was a Sedara fan and she just cussed me out and that was it. They’re very passionate there. Yeah, Montreal is a little bit different from the rest of Canada. Yeah. It was in the heart it was in the middle of the heart of the Habs Bruins rivalry. So, Oh, of course. Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay. Yeah. And then I added to it. I was like, and she was like, I can’t believe you you you like you like you like him. And I was like, yeah, I really loved when he planted Matt Patch already on his face as a joke. And then made her even more mad. I’m like, oh jeez. Yeah, they take things a little bit too seriously. Hey, before I let you go, Ryan, I wanted to do a little friendly wager with you. We’ll we’ll figure it out later, but um because I know this is a hot topic with both ABS fans and Kucks fans. I’m gonna bet that Quinn Hughes is going to get more Norris Trophy votes than Kale Mar this year. What do you think of that? Uh, you know, I don’t know. You know, I like Hughes. I think M Well, it just really depends. You know, Mar didn’t have a great playoff. You know, it wasn’t his best performance, but if you look back at the 1992 Stanley Cup playoffs, Wayne Gretzky didn’t have a really good playoff either. So, yeah. Well, Hughes Hughes didn’t play actually Hughes’s points weren’t good in the last playoffs either. So, I think uh I think like Kevin Buchard had more and then there’s this whole debate between Oilers fans like Buchard’s better than Hughes and it’s like no, he isn’t. Like Buchard’s got his got his issues. But yeah, just just poking fun because that’s something I always see with the ABS fans. It’s the big debate who’s the better defenseman, Mar Hughes. And I think, you know, hopefully hopefully Hughes is healthy this year and we can because we never got that in the Four Nations, right? Like actually I think if Hughes played you guys probably would have won the Four Nations and not Canada, but that that’s a story for another day. Ryan, thank you so much for doing this, man. Uh anything you got coming up for Mile High Hockey? Anything you got going on for combat sports? You do some great work in the boxing space as well. Uh just let our audience know before you get out of here. Oh, yeah. You know, I’m really um really excited that Haime Mongia got got off on testing positive multiple times for banned substances and there I guess they called it a false positive. I’m like, you mean false positives cuz he failed multiple tests? But boxing is a joke, but um you know, hockeyy’s a lot better. I’m just saying. Like if you want if you want to keep your sanity, stick with this sport. Boxing is just it’s not it’s not all that fun. So yeah. Um but yeah, Mile High Hockey. I also cover um the Red Wings with Octopus Thrower. I’m Oh, I didn’t know that. Oh, I gota I gotta get you back on then soon to to talk some Red Wings then. If that’s the case, I’d love to get you on. Yeah, we got to talk some Red Wings, too. Yeah. But um but yeah, if you if you guys ever want to talk to me about boxing and what what’s going on or why why the sport’s so complicated, I can I can break it down to you. But it’s it would it would take a novel. Like for example, in boxing there are like there’s like 17 or 18 different weight classes and there’s four champions per weight class. Like in in the NHL you have one Stanley Cup champion, right? But in boxing you have four different champions and every champion has a different usually has a different promoter, different network, and they don’t get along. So the best don’t fight the best and it’s it’s garbage. And that’s why UFC is more enjoyable these days. I’m not really a big fan of the product, but I like their business model. But that’s a that’s a subject for another day. Yeah. No, we can definitely talk about that another time. Uh Ryan, this was awesome. We’ll definitely get you back on here again, man. Enjoy practice and uh we’ll talk to you again soon. Thanks, man. We’ll see you. Yeah. See you, Ryan. There we go. That is a Ryan O’Hara from Mile High Hockey joining us here on the program. First time getting a chance to chat with them. You know, one of the cool things about uh me working in combat sports is uh you do come and and encounter uh other people in in the space. And I know Ryan like you mentioned there or I mentioned there covering more boxing than than MMA, but I I don’t know how we ended up following each other on Twitter, but uh glad to get him on and and that’s sort of been the theme with this show in the offseason is trying to get different teams. So I saw call, you know, Ryan was at, you know, Colorado Avalanche practice. I was like, perfect. That’s a team we haven’t talked about here on the show this season. So definitely going to get Ryan back on as the season sort of progresses. I’m trying to the goal here with this show, guys. And and again, I appreciate the the support we have on this show. That’s uh you know, not not the biggest uh show out there, but we’re we’re trucking along. Uh but the goal is to try and get someone from every team to to talk about a team. So that way if any sort of news breaks, I’ve got someone I can uh chat with. So I’m slowly bringing up building up that rolodex kind of like I do in MMA. That that’s kind of what I’m known for in MMA. I got my contacts and people I can interview. But uh when it comes to hockey, slowly building that up a little bit. So really good stuff there from Ryan. Didn’t get a chance to ask him, but uh I saw the Colorado Avalanche uh ranked number 14th in front office confidence. Uh that article came out with The Athletic. We talked about this I think last week with Troy. Uh so let’s read some of the comments on this as we’re sticking with Colorado. Um so these are so basically what this article is is Dominion gets talks to like sources and stuff throughout the league and they rank um you know they they rank which front office got the best rating from the public and the fan base and then they get some quotes to kind of describe that as well. And I talked about how the Athletic has this obsession with glazing the Carolina Hurricanes and talk about how great they are. Maybe I’m just a Carolina hater. I don’t know. I think that’s been well known on this channel. I’m surprised to see Colorado so low. Like Ryan did mention some of the trades that didn’t work out. But them being at 14 seems a little low to me. But let’s read some of the quotes that they have in this article. It says, “I’m slowly losing confidence following the cup win. They haven’t had any true A+ moves from my perspective.” Well, to be fair, like I think at the time when they traded Rantin, which was surprising, but I think if they knew they weren’t going to be able to resign him, the fact that they got Naturus out of that I think wasn’t bad, right? Like it could have been worse. It could have been one of those situations where your hand sort of forced like kind of what happened with uh uh Matthew Chuck in Calgary. Um so yeah, I do like I don’t think the statement’s wrong, but I also think that like they kind of did the best they could. Kind of like resigning Brock Nelson in the offseason. Like you look around what’s a better center? Who’s going to be a better upgrade than Brock Nelson, right? Like there were a lot of teams after him. Not necessarily for the way he played when the ABS acquired him after the deadline, but just for the simple fact that like there just weren’t many centers out there and they needed to try something new. So those are some moves that I like. But um yeah, I do I I would like to see them make maybe a bigger move at some point, but I’m not really sure what that looks like. Appreciate that they have a clear vision for building a cup contending team. I love the aggression, but they’re drafting and developing hugely lacking. They aren’t winning trades like they seemingly used to. That that’s fair, too. And the drafting. Yeah, I’m trying to remember like have they had like a good prospect and like that has like risen up in the ranks? That’s something I should ask Ryan. Uh John, you’d probably know actually because you follow the prospects quite well, but I like I can’t think of like a prospect they’ve had. Like you look at some of the big names on their team if we kind of look at the lineup right now like most of these guys were I mean other than Mar a lot of these guys were trades or free agent signings or whatever like Devon Taves was a trade with the Islanders right and that ended up like working out like talk about a that was a very much a winning trade for Colorado because my understanding was Taves and I think the Islanders couldn’t come to terms on like money so the ABS ended up getting him and took advantage of that and you get Brent Burns on a low contract. Um, so yeah, there there’s, you know, there’s a lot to like here, but um, we’ll see if Nelson can perform better than he did last year. I think that’s sort of a big thing with the AS. And if he can, you know, there’s some promise there. So, we’ll see. But Colorado is still going to be I mean, they’ll be a playoff team. We’ll see how far they can go. Dallas, I mean, has Dallas gotten significantly better? They’re going to have a full season with Ranton. We’ll have to see. Hopefully, you know, I think the A I think I think how, you know, sort of answering my own question with with Ryan here about the AS and like where they can go. I think a lot depends on who they end up playing in the playoffs because sometimes those early matchups end up being the two best teams, you know what I mean? Like, so we’ll have to see how they plug along this season, but definitely not the dominant ABS that we saw in the ‘9s as well. Uh, can’t wait for that sick reverse retro Nordique jersey. So good. When does has that come out yet? Do we know uh reverse retro Quebec? Um Oh, yeah. Yeah, I’ve seen that one. Yeah, that does look cool. The uh with the avalanche colors, those look kind of nice. Are you excited for Olympic hockey? Who would be your early top three teams? Oh, am I ever? So, are these Olympics now? Is Russia back in? I can’t remember that. Um uh let me just have a look. 2026 Olympic hockey teams. Are they not? Just looking right here on uh good old AI. They’ve already got the game set. Yeah, it looks like Russia’s not in. So that I mean if they’re not in and I get it the climate we’re in right now and all that but you know like John maybe you’ll agree with me here. Doesn’t that kind of take a little bit away from the tournament if Russia’s not in there? You’ve got so many good Russian players. It’s kind of a bummer that they’re not going to be featured here. No offense to Italy and Switzerland and some of these other teams, but uh not a big fan of that. But yeah, early early teams. Uh US I I would be favored. Um, probably Sweden and then I mean and then Canada I I think right like Canada and US have to be in that top three I would think. Um, we we’ll see what type of roster Canada Canada puts together. There’s a lot of questions. Who should be on this team? Who’s going to be the goalending? That was that that was something last year too. Like Logan Thompson I think had the best numbers out of anyone and he wasn’t even on the the the top three, right? So we’ll see what they end up deciding for what that roster is going to look like. is is uh you know are are is you know there there’s some questions about some of the veterans like are you going to see some of them on there? I I don’t know. We’ll see. It’s going to be interesting. How do you see Dallas doing this season? Let’s have a look at Dallas here. I always kind of forget like what things are sort of looking like. Still a strong team. I think the big thing we’re keeping an eye on with Dallas is are they going to trade Jason Robertson? I I I probably not. I don’t know what a team could give them that way because this is what you got to remember and we talk about this all the time in the show. Okay, this is a, you know, this is a league now where teams are trying to get better. So, if Jason Robertson gets traded, they would need someone of equal value or better value to come back. And that’s probably not going to happen, right? The only the only way I could see them making a trade during the season would be because they’re not in cap trouble would be if they they’re trading someone that’s maybe like, yeah, of similar caliber. I just don’t see it happening. I think Robertson’s going to stay. um they they’ll still be in it. They they’ll still be a strong team. I mean, this is a very well- balanced team. One of the things I talked about last year with uh Travis Taylor, who covers the stars, we’ve had him on here before, is just the depth of the stars is very strong. Even on the defensive end, traded Matt Dumba because they didn’t need him. And then you still got net you’ve got Jake and Casey to Smith. I’ve been a big Casey to Smith fan as a backup. Talking about goalending tandemss, I think that’s worked out quite well. Tough one with Nelson. kind of had to resign him, but that’s a rich contract for an older borderline 2C. It’s the climate though. Like I don’t think Nelson is worth what he’s getting, right? Like I think that’s fair. Um but it’s also like who are you going to get? Every team’s wanting a 2C. Winnipeg, Vancouver. Um I think even the Leafs, like there’s there’s just a lot of teams like that that need a 2C and there’s just not a lot of options available. A lot of teams aren’t trading. So that’s where um that’s where we’re kind of at right now. No, Russia, I don’t think. No, you’re right. Yeah, it kind of taints the entire tournament, but having Russia, just having them compete without the flag. They could have done that, too. It’s a good point. Like, why do the athletes have to suffer? Like, couldn’t they just do like I guess you can’t really participate in the Olympics without a flag, right? Have they ever done that? I don’t know. I’m not sure the answer to that. Not sure if Robertson wants to be in Canada, but Flames Stars rumors are strong. Rasmus would be involved, obviously. But, do they But does Dallas need another defenseman, do you think? Like where would he even slot in here? Rasmus Anderson would be what was he right D? Look this up here. He is a right shot defenseman. So like you got Mirohkin in. I guess he would be second pair instead of Labouchkin and then maybe you trade someone out. I don’t know. I guess I I guess that could work. But you want to give up some of your like you need guys to score too. you need some pop unless you’re hoping some of the younger guys like Johnson can step up and some of these other guys. But yeah, I I guess I could make sense. I just don’t know if Dallas is in in the hunt for a uh for someone like that. This I I kind of feel like Rasmus is going to go to Vegas somehow. They’ll they’ll figure out a way to do it. I don’t know how they’re going to do it with their cap space. I think Vegas right now, if I’m not mistaken, is still over the cap, I think. Let’s have a look at Puckedia. Um where are we here? Yeah, they’re $7 million over the cap now. Is that now is Petra Angelo on the IR? Does that relieve some space? Yeah, I’m not sure. I’m not sure how that all works. Need a cap guy on here to figure that out for me? But um yeah, I I don’t know if they could swing it, but Vegas seems obvious just because you you don’t have Petra Angelo. Like that seems like an obvious hole to fill with a guy like Rasmus Anderson, right? Similar age, right? How old’s Anderson now? Anderson is he Oh, he’s 28. Never mind. He’s a lot younger. Why did I think he was older? So, you’re getting a guy in the prime of his career right now that could be of of use. And they’ve already done trades with the Flames before, right? That’s how they got Noah Hannifan. So, we’ll see. They had Russians in the Olympics since the war. No flags, no anthems. Oh, I didn’t know that. This is why we glad we have Jon in here dropping some good knowledge us, which is which is great. So, um yeah, I I would like to see Russia in there. You know, politics aside, Alchvetkin, need to see him in the Olympics. Just kind of takes it uh takes it a bit of, you know, bit away there. Uh, one of the things I wanted to mention here today, oh, we got a little bit of breaking news here. Should mention this, Frank Sarah Valley reporting that uh, US Hockey Hall of Fame class of 2025, Scott Gomez, Zach Perez, Joe Pavvelski, and Terara Uni. I like that. Also like these Carolina jerseys here. I’ll give Carolina some credit. I don’t mind these new threads for their Wait, like that red and black looks really sharp. I like that. It looks good. I I I got to say though, you guys let me know in the chat. I’m not a fan of the shoulder things here. I like the shoulder. I I like the the the ones on the top shoulder. I would have done red up here and not down here. I would have done black down here and maybe a smaller black and red and then have the the shoulder up there. So, um yeah. So, that’s their new away threads period. They’ve switched that up. That looks good. Uh, some other news. Calgary Flames adding Dave Lowry to the coaching staff. Uh, they let go someone else yesterday due to personal reasons. Can’t remember the guy’s name. And then, uh, here we have, uh, this is big. This was, uh, yesterday. Uh, sources, the NHL and NHLPA have agreed to rolling implementation for CVA changes. Among them, the new playoff salary cap system will come into effect this season for the 2026 Stanley Cup playoffs. So, this is significant. Oh, sorry. You guys can’t see my screen. My bad. I didn’t realize that until a second ago. Sorry. I’m talking about the Carolina jersey. I didn’t even show you what I was talking about. Uh these are the jerseys. That’s what I meant to say. My bad, guys. I was just so uh taken aback with how good they look. What do you guys think? Let me know in the chat if you’re a fan of the jerseys. I think they look good, but I would prefer it on the on the top here, not on the uh not on the sides. Uh Dave Lowry is the coach I mentioned there. Anyways, getting back to what I was saying here. Um, yeah. So, this is interesting because this is basically what, you know, Tampa did years ago and Vegas has done traditionally where they will put players on IR and then they’re ready in the playoffs and then they’re over the cap, but because it’s the playoffs, they don’t they don’t count it as well. So, um, that that’s a very interesting change here. So, and it needed to be done. I mean, there were teams that were certainly Look, you could say it’s cheating. Technically, it wasn’t cheating because they weren’t technically well, were they lying about the injury? Were Were they you know these are things that that we don’t know. We need to put Mark Stone to a lie detector test to see if he was in fact injured leading into the playoffs here. So that that’s something to find out. But no, I think this is a good move. I I I don’t like this cap gymnastics that certain teams have done to try and circumvent the cap. I think everyone’s got to play by the same playing field. So I’m a fan of this. I’m a fan of this as well. Here’s another one. Players will have till September 15, 2026. Sign deals with current structure term signing bonus variability. All deals signed after September 16th, 2026, so next September, not this September, are subject to a new CBA. Players dress code and players ability to endorse wine spirits begin immediately. Interesting. So my understanding is um bonuses will they’re not allowing bonuses for certain teams. Like you can’t add in like a $10 million bonus and sign someone for a million dollars. So that’s something that I think was interesting. Also, Tyson Barry retiring. Good luck to him. Uh, anyways, yeah, just wanted to mention those little bit of tidbits as well. What do you think is the best redesign? Oh, sorry, I missed a couple questions here. I really like the blues uh redesign. Yeah, what uh let’s find those. St. Louis Blues redesign. Okay, the logo is a little bit different. So, it’s kind of like the Oh, okay. So, here, let me show you what I see on the screen. I’d have to see how this looks on a player’s jersey. I don’t mind the kind of baby blue there. Yeah, it’s okay. You know, this kind of looks like Buffalo though, doesn’t it? Does it not? The Sabres jerseys a little bit. I don’t know if I like that. There we go. This is a video on it, I guess. So, the logo is a bit different and the colors look more like Buffalo. It’s more of like a baby blue instead of a dark blue. Closer to a baby blue. I think it looks good. Maybe not like outstanding, but uh why not? Yeah, not bad. Not bad. Going to 84 game regular season 2. Starting earlier, too. Yeah, the starting earlier is good. Um listen, my my kids starting hockey next week. Why can’t the NHL get get things underway here like right away? Like it’s I don’t know. I’m impatient. I just want to see some hockey. I’ve been checking out Ryan’s feed and looking everywhere else I can to kind of get some updates just on on what’s going on, but it’s uh yeah, there’s um I I need some hockey back in my life. Who do you think is the best redesign? Blues looks pretty good. I love the LA Kings going back to the N. Yeah, uh the the Kings jerseys. I like the Chevy jerseys that they’ve gone back to. I never like the uh the Kings like when they won the cups and stuff. I never like this one. This is the one we’re looking at here. Didn’t like this one that much. I think it just looked like a soccer club. This looks way better. the Kings with the uh that jersey that just looks sharp and that that’s what Gretzky wore, right? Maybe I’m a little nostalgic, but that’s what I like. These are the jerseys over the years. Everyone hated this one with the purple king. Even that one too, the uh the Kings from uh 98 to 2002. Didn’t like that one either. Any of these Kings ones, this Yeah, the the Kings that they have now. That looks good. That’s sharp. That’s very sharp. Like that a lot. Let’s get a couple more questions in here, guys, and then we’ll then we’ll wrap things up, you know, just do just do over 45 minutes here usually. So, um, yeah, that that’s that’s how we normally do the show here. Are you coaching your boy this year again? Yeah, so I am going to do an So, I haven’t actually coached um ice hockey like as a head coach, and I’m not going to this year because I I haven’t actually done assistant coaching uh yet. I I helped out a bit with my son’s team last year, but didn’t do on like like any like full-on like strategy or coaching. So, this year for my son’s uh under nine team, I will I’m going to try and be an assistant coach. I have all my certifications. Like, there’s no issues there. It just depends on what team my son’s on and if they need an assistant coach and and or not. So, I’d like to get a season under my belt as an assistant coach and then maybe in the future I’ll do full coaching ice hockey. But ice hockey coaching is a totally different animal than uh me coaching uh ball hockey, which is what I do in the spring. That was uh way easier. I mean, you know, you do practices and stuff, but with ice hockey, there’s so much more involved with uh, you know, like like cones and pucks and nets and all this different stuff that’s it’s just a lot more to deal with. So, I I’m I want to do it. I just I think right now I need to need to get some experience under my belt and then we’ll then we’ll do the the full coaching. But, yeah, I’ll definitely be doing assistant coaching and then I’m I’m coaching my son’s soccer team this year. Kind of got roped into it again. Same thing. Put put myself down as an assistant and then um they’re like, “Hey, we need more head coaches.” and I was like, “All right, I’ll do it. That’s fine.” So, um that that’s where we’re at with with soccer as well. So, uh all right, guys. Um probably good time to end the show here today. Next week, uh we’ll either get Troy back on or I’m working on a few other guests as well to potentially uh talk about some more teams as we’re leading into the season right now. But again, I appreciate all you who come on here and support the show every week. Uh we will be back to a regular schedule. I think I was off last week for vacation. You can see the tan here. So, it’s not like I was lying about that. Um, but yeah, I’ll be back uh next week and we’ll we’ll see what team we end up covering. Um, I’m working on a guy for the Flyers right now that I’m hoping to get a former NHL actually. So, I’m kind of working that a little bit and uh if not, we’ll get Troy back on as we sort of look ahead to the season. Uh, but again, if I didn’t get your question answered here, uh, leave it in the comments. I will get back to you whenever I get a chance here if you guys like. Appreciate you guys tuning in. This is the Fanatics View Hockey Show. Hit that like button, hit the subscribe button, hit that notification bell. I’ll see you next Wednesday. Thanks so much for tuning in. I’ll talk to you guys soon.
Host @LynchOnSports is joined by Ryan O’Hara of Mile High Sports to discuss Colorado Avalanche offseason and expectations for the upcoming season.
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