Colorado Avalanche Fantasy Hockey Team Preview | 2025-26
[Music] Welcome to the DFO Fantasy Show team preview series. I’m managing fantasy editor of dailyfaceoff.com, Brock Sean, and today we will be covering the Colorado Avalanche. The Avalanche have finished with 100 plus points in four consecutive seasons. And during that time, they have the second best points percentage and are the second highest scoring team in the NHL. The sports books expect that run to continue in 2025-26 as the Avalanche are projected to finish with 105.5 points, the sixth best record in the NHL and the fourth best record in the Western Conference. The Avalanche are loaded with quality fantasy talent. According to Yahoo’s ADPs, they have four players going in the top 50 and eight players going in the top 150. So, we have a lot of ground to cover today. Let’s start with the forwards and the current number two overall fantasy pick, Nathan McKinnon. In the DFO consensus top 300, McKinnon ranks second overall, but is ranked anywhere from first to third by our analysts. There’s certainly a case for him going first overall ahead of Conor McDavid. He’s been better in each of the last two seasons. And in the DFO projections, he ranks third in points, ninth in goals, fourth in power play points, and first in shots on goal. And when you look solely at the projections in the DFO customizable rankings tool, if you plug in standard Yahoo point scoring, McKinnon Grazo is the best player overall. We talked about it on the DFO show centers preview the other day. I’d almost rather have the number two overall pick so I don’t have to decide between McKinnon or McDavid. Next is Martin Neess who was excellent in his 30 games with the Avalanche following last year’s trade. And don’t get me wrong, he was obviously very good at the Hurricanes as well, but he had 11 goals and 17 assists for 28 points in 30 games with the Avalanche and saw a dramatic increase in ice time. He went from 1805 in Carolina to 20 minutes and 30 seconds per game in Colorado. When you couple with what we saw from him last season with the fact that he’s in a contract the year this year, we have all the ingredients for a career year for Martin Neess. With an ADP of 50.5, NAS is looking like a great value right now. Not a single DFO analyst has him ranked lower than 47th and he has a consensus ranking of 32nd, a round and a half earlier than his current ADP. So, I love me some Martin Netas this year. Things get a little bit trickier as you move down the depth chart here and get into the eighth round where you have both Valerie Nushkin and Brock Nelson coming off the board. Nushkin obviously has the talent to be an eighthround fantasy pick. He’s averaged 35 goals and 37 assists per 82 games over the last four seasons. The problem, he’s missed 35% of the games during that time. So, when he’s in the lineup, he’s great, but he hasn’t played more than 65 games since 2016. If you could guarantee me he was going to play 82 games, he’d easily be a top 50 fantasy pick for me. But the likelihood of that happening seems extremely low. With that said, I would rather draft Nituskin at 89 than Brock Nelson at 90th. Overall, Nelson’s ice time dropped dramatically to 17 minutes 30 seconds after his trade to Colorado, and he scored a 26 goal, 30 assist pace. And both his personal shooting percentage and his on ice shooting percentage suggest that he was even lucky to get to those marks. There’s absolutely no reason to be taking a strict center at Nelson in the eighth round when you can get somebody like Mikas Aanagad 60 picks later. The last two draftable forwards in Colorado are Gabriel Landiskogg and Archery Lechin. It’s hard to know exactly what you’re going to get out of Landisk after so much time off, but he looked really good in his brief playoff stint last season. Luckily, he’s going to the 14th round in fantasy right now, so he’s a lowrisk, high reward selection. It was a long time ago, but in his last three full NHL seasons, Landiskog averaged 36 goals and 43 assists per 82 games. Even if he’s 75% of that player, he could still score 25 plus goals with 30 plus assists this season. Lechinan can also be a serviceable uh pick at the end of your draft. He set a career-high with 27 goals last season and has averaged nearly 30 goals per 82 games during his time with the Avalanche. Unfortunately, like Nushkin, he’s had a very difficult time staying healthy, but he’s still a cheap exposure pick to McKinnon that could be a solid sleep solid sleeper pick if he ends up playing close to 82 games this season. On the blue line, Kale Mar is currently the number one defenseman and the number five overall pick off the board with an ADP of 5.5. After a couple of injuryp plagued seasons to begin his career, Macar has played in 96% of the games over the last two seasons and has scored 14 more goals and 14 more points than the second ranked defenseman in both of those categories. He’s either the first or second uh either first or second among defenseman in basically every single standard fantasy category. And he’s an obvious no-brainer as the number one defenseman off the board. The question really becomes how early do you take a defenseman? I personally have him ranked at number eight behind McDavid, McKinnon, Cucherov, Dry Cidle, Passion, and Capriov. I just prefer those elite wingers a little bit more uh than taking Macar fifth overall. But later in the first round, absolutely no-brainer pick. Now, Macar’s D partner, Devont Taves, usually goes too early in fantasy for a player uh that will basically never touch PP1 outside of a few seconds here and there, but his ADP of 138 this season is actually quite appealing. I I’ve basically never drafted Taves cuz he usually goes around like the 90th pick, but at 138, that’s perfectly uh well within the range of outcomes for him this year. He can certainly play up to that standard. He’s scored double-digit goals in three of the last four seasons while averaging 40 assists and a league best plus 37 rating during those seasons. The offensive numbers are impressive when you consider the fact that he averages only seven power play points per season. He just gets the job done at 5v5. And if your league counts plus minus, he’s as good as it gets in that category. He is a low-end number three, high-end number fantasy blue liner for me. And he’s going right around that spot. Going around the same spot in drafts right now as Brent Burns, who signed with the Avalanche this summer. At age 40, it’s hard to know exactly how much is left in the tank for Burns, but he still played nearly 21 minutes per game last season with the Hurricanes and had some bad luck in his personal shooting percentage and his on ice shooting percentage. Like Taves, most of his production is going to have to come at 5v5. He’s not taking over the power play one quarterback from a car. So, his ceiling is somewhat capped. But even when you look at last year’s kind of poor results, I still think there’s the possibility of him being a 10 goal scorer and 30 assist player this year. But at this point, with where they’re going, I’d much prefer Taves only a few spots ahead in ADP. And now with the goalies, drafting an Avalanche goalie will feel much better this year than it did last year. A season ago, we were basically reluctantly clicking on Alexander Gorgv simply because he was the Avalanche goalie. While McKenzie Blackwood gave you a legitimate reason to want to click his name this year, going 2212 and three with a 233 goals against average and a 913 save percentage with three shutouts after being acquired by the Avalanche. He’s going to cost you an early third round pick. So, it will depend on how comfortable you are in drafting a goalie early or your draft strategy on whether or not you want to take a go go goalie that early. The thing that’s interesting is where he’s going right now. You can basically start your draft with Nathan McKinnon, somebody in the second round, call it whoever, and then get uh Blackwood in the third round and basically, you know, if McKinnon has a good day, the ABS are probably winning. You’re probably getting a win with Blackwood. Is kind of an interesting spot in where he’s going. You can kind of stack up McKinnon and Blackwood, but he’s going to be in the mix to lead the NHL in wins, and he was top 10 in both goals against average and save percentage last season. So, I absolutely love me some Mackenzie Blackwood. It just depends on how early you’re willing to draft a goalie. And I’m now joined by Eric Dean of Colorado Hockey. Now, thank you so much for joining me today. Yeah, of course. Thanks for having me on. No problem. Before we get into the nittyritty of the kind of the depths of the fantasy hockey uh Colorado Avalanche, I want to just know what player you think from this Avalanche roster is due for a breakout uh in 202526. So, I’m going to go out on a limb with this one, and I’m kind of hitching my wagon as somebody who has had some issues both physically and off the ice over the last couple years, but I’m going to say Val Nachushkin. And I’m going to do that for a couple reasons. Uh, number one, if you look at Val stats, obviously since the Avalanche won the Stanley Cup, which the cup year was his breakout year, but since they’ve won the cup, he’s been roughly around 50 games. He’s missed games because of injury. He’s missed games because of suspensions. Uh the Avalanche are hoping that this is the first time since 2022 where we don’t have to talk about a vow suspension. It’s more on the ice performance, maybe an injury here or there. But with the absence of Miko Rantin and with him no longer in the fold, you look at what Val’s done over the last couple years, 28 goals in 54 games and then 21 goals in 43 games. You put that together, he’s got 49 goals in his last 97 regular season games. So ultimately he’s a half a goal per game pace. And when you lose a Miko Rantin and when you replace him with someone like Nus who’s still going to give you points but he’s not going to give you 5055 goals like Mo did a couple years ago. Val’s the ideal guy that you know I know he’s going to start on that second line but I can see him working his way up to that first line with Nathan McKinnon where he was with him and Mo back in 2024. And you know if he plays 70 games like he’ll give you 35 goals. If he gives you plays 80 games, he might give you 40 goals. He might give you 45 if if McKinnon’s really more into being a playmaker than a scorer, which he kind of decides any given year which one he wants. But without Miko Rantin, with Val Nushkin hopefully having that suspension and and the off ice issues and struggles behind him, if the guy can be healthy, if he can play 70 80 games, which he honestly has, you know, ultimately he’s never done with the Avalanche. In 2020, he played 65 games out of I think it was 67 in that COVID year. Uh if he can give you close to a full year, that’s a guy 30 years old right in his prime that I think we should be keeping an eye on. Yeah, I’ve been a big Nushkin fan for a few years now and it’s always leaves you wanting a little bit more just because the lack of games played, but after the rant and trade after he returned to the lineup last year, uh 22 games to close out the season, finished on a 37 goal pace. So definitely a guy that if healthy can certainly flirt with 40 goals. Let’s stick with Nushkin for a second here because if you had to pick a player out of let’s say Lechin Nelson and Nushkin to score the most goals who would it be? Like you said Lechin might be the guy that plays most of the ice time with McKinnon maybe even just earlier in the season. Nelson’s a guy that’s averaged 35 goals over the last four seasons. Nushkin’s been right around that same average just without the necessary games played to kind of get there. If you had to pick one, would it be Nushkin? I think so. I think Nushkin is the one that’s that’s going to give you the most goals. Brock Nelson, um I’m really interested to know where he’s going to be. Obviously, 80 games last year, 26 goals between the ABS and the Islanders. I can see him hovering around the 30 mark. Linen has gotten close to 30 a couple times. I don’t believe he’s eclipsed that mark. And uh Val obviously is a guy that has scored at that pace and and constantly plays at that level. I know last year you said it was a 37 goal pace after he came back. Uh that includes he had a little bit of like a of a dry spell late in the regular season and obviously heading into the playoffs or something like that if I remember correctly. So this is a guy that that I think is like he’s best suited as a goal scorer. he’s best suited in front of the net. Uh, you know, chipping away at the puck and and and playing with Nathan McKinnon and, you know, maybe Marty Nes is on the other wing, who’s a guy who’s also a playmaker, also a shifty player. Val’s going to get in the dirty areas. He’s going to do what Mark Stone does for the Vegas Golden Knights. And and I think he’s the one that I would pick honestly. Um, he might have the most goals from the top six. And again, that depends on Nathan McKinnon. McKinnon some years decides he wants to be a 50 goal guy. uh some years decides he wants to be a 90 assist guy. So, it just kind of depends which way he he shifts toward this year. It might be it must be fun to have that kind of flexibility. Um and just to your point, only two goals in his final nine games for Valenushkin and Nelson is such an interesting player because he was kind of like so consistent during his time with the Islanders and then got off to that bit of a slow start with the ABS. Finished the season a little bit stronger, 12 points in his final 15 games. Let’s get to one of the most interesting storylines entering 2526 for the ABS and that’s Gabriel Landiskov. First full season since 2022. He looked good in the few playoff games that we saw him before they were eliminated. We currently have him projected at 17 goals, 30 assists in 72 games. Would you take the over or under on that mark? And then just what are your thoughts here on Landisk entry this season? So I have been an optimist on the Landisk wagon for a few years and I’m going to continue that. Uh I I don’t know if I’ll take the overunder or under on 72 games and it can go either way, but I do think I’ll take the over on the 47 points. Like I can see him putting up 49 points in 65 games, for example. Like if it comes to that. Um the thing with Gabe is he, you know, people talk about, for example, Jonathan Taves, someone who’s been out of the game for a few years, wants to work his way back in. the ABS track to sign him actually. But I’m really curious to see, for example, with Taves, what being away from the game for three years and now being healthy can do. Now, the difference between someone like that and Gabe Landiskog is Gabe didn’t leave the game. He did not retire. He did not go. He was at the rink every day. If he wasn’t at the rink, he was somewhere in Sweden, somewhere in God knows where. If you watch the documentary, he went everywhere to fix this dang knee of his. But he was always keeping himself in game shape. He never took a break from I’m a professional hockey player. So that always made me like the the the mentality I’ve had every year. And if you and I were doing this interview 12 months ago, I would have told you if Gabe can figure out the knee, if he can find a way to be that groundbreaking player with this surgery, with this injury, I think he’ll be back to being Gabe Landisk because at 32 years old, he’s still in his prime. He’s still, you know, maybe he’s at the tail end of it, but he’s still the guy that we saw pre-inj injury that I think it was 30 goals in 58 games before he was injured in in in 2022. Like, you know, yeah, 30 and 51 years. 30 and 51, even better. Like, that’s a that’s a heck of a goalc scoring pace. So, when I see numbers like that and when I see what he did in the playoffs, I see a guy that might have figured out how to handle this injury. you know, is he going to be perfect? But probably not. He might have to do a lot more recovery stuff. But think Patrick Kane, you know, Patrick Kane before he signed with the Red Wings was like, well, if he gets the hip under control, what kind of Kane are we going to get? And we’re still getting 60 70 point almost 40year-old Kane. So, I can see Landiskog being the same thing in terms of as long as the knee’s not holding him back, which in the playoffs it didn’t look like it was like he he looked and and the fact that he played four of those games I believe in seven or eight nights uh without pause, ice time constantly increasing, roll constantly increasing makes me feel like, you know, obviously if somebody hits him knee on knee and he tears an ACL, that’s a different story, but it makes me feel like he’s got the knee under control. And if he’s got the knee under control, it would not surprise me if it takes him a season to kind of get back to where he was. But I do genuinely like in the heart of hearts believe there is a 70 point Landiskog, 80 point Landisogg even over the next four or five years that we’re going to see again whether it’s this season, the season after. Um so mark me down as someone who thinks he’s going to get more than 47 points because what we’ve seen from the Avalanche, especially in the playoffs, is oh you’re a third liner. No, you’re on the second line. you’re on the first power play unit. He’s going to get those minutes. We’ve mentioned every part of the Avalanch’s top six today. And and and you know, it’s it’s a deep core. It’s it’s a team that he’s going to play a lot of minutes with. And if you know anything about Jared Bedar is he doesn’t have a first line and a second line. He has a first line center named Nathan McKinnon, a second line center named Brock Nelson, which used to be Cadri. And his wingers, they go up and down. He plays them wherever the heck he wants. So Landy will play with Nate. Val will play with Nate at some point. Like you said, it’ll probably be leak in a natur that start with him. So, put me in as someone who believes he’ll get over 40. You said 47. I think he’ll get over 47 points. 72 games. We’ll see. Yeah, that’s the one thing like I you mentioned it. Just seeing the ice climb 1817, then 1936, then 2020 um in those last three playoff games. Seeing that consistently climb to me makes it feel like he’s healthy and it’s just a matter of time, right? hasn’t played over 54 games since 2019, but in his previous three seasons averaged 79.9 points over 82 games. So, a near point per game player when he’s on the ice just needs to uh stay healthy and you know what a comeback story it will be. Final question for you here is just what do you expect from McKenzie Blackwood this season? He’s a very difficult goalie to project because upon his arrival in Colorado last season, he was unbelievable. He had a 938 save percentage in his first 12 games. He was great. After that though, just a 901 save percentage in his final 25 games. Wasn’t particularly sharp in the playoffs at times. So just like kind of twofold question like how much work do we end up seeing Blackwood start this year and just what kind of goalie is he going to be? Is he going to be closer to that goalie we saw in the first 12 games? Maybe a little bit closer to the goalie we saw at the end of the year or maybe somewhere in between. I think somewhere in between. I mean, I I I I think back to guys like Philip Grubau and guys like Darcy Kemper and and that’s all you need from him and and ultimately I think he can give you that. But the difference between him and someone like Grubau, someone like Keer is, you know, he’s got that that potential. He’s got that I’m, you know, young goalie who’s come up through the Canadian system who everybody talked about five, six years ago pre-COVID was like this might be the next team Canada starter. and and and I think if you combine all of that together with like the maturity of the player now, you know, there’s a there’s a writer here in Denver who covered him in in New Jersey years ago and now covers him here and always talks about how different of a player he is, how different of a person he is, how he was a goofier, you know, kid in New Jersey and how much more mature and how much more kind of veteran like he is now. This is his first real opportunity. um when he came in last year, it was to stop the bleeding and and Scott Wedgewood came in first to stop the bleeding and then Blackwood came in and stopped even more of it. And and I think now with a full year with a full training camp with all of these things under his belt with Colorado, um I look at Darcy Keer’s numbers in 2022 and I believe Keer was around a 920 safe percentage. He had 37 wins. Um and I could see that being the case. I could see him being the kind of player. Yeah, I could see him being the kind of player where uh he might not become a VZNet trophy finalist, but that might be because people are going to say, well, he’s playing behind the Avalanche system and and and that’s fine if if he can be the Cory Crawford or or the Chris Osgood of the early Red Wings. like that’s all this team needs. But but the difference between him and again Keer who came in on the last year of his deal and at an older age or or Grubower is he he seems like the guy that can do it more consistently. He seems like the guy that can give you what Cory Crawford gave Chicago where we never talked much about Cory Crawford, but you look back at it now and you’re like, you know what, he was solid and we’ve seen what a bad goalie can do to a team. We saw it with Gueorgv last year. what Crawford did is is all you need when you have a team like this. Yeah. And goalending we often talk about from a fantasy perspective is more of a team related position than it is an individual related uh position. And obviously Blackwood is among the you know on one of the best teams in the league. And the one thing that I always just say when I watch him is he’s just a monster. He’s so big and he takes up so much the net and yeah he just needs to be above average and this team will go very deep. If you just really quickly, last last thought here. If you had to handicap how many starts he he’s going to see this year, what would you say? Like last year, he started 53 between uh San Jose and Colorado. Do you think it’s going to be kind of like a 7030 split between him and um and Wedgewood this year? I can see Wedgewood getting around 25 start. So, I would say Blackwood will pass the se will pass the 53, but I don’t think he’ll hit 60. And that’s just because like Wedgwood is such a wonderful backup. He he gives you what Pavl Francos gave you in 2022, a guy that you can kind of rely on. So I can see around that 55 to 59 mark for Blackwood and the rest for Wedgwood, assuming obviously Blackwood doesn’t have any injuries, which thankfully last year he did not. Excellent, Eric. Thank you so much for joining me today and best of luck covering the abs this season. Of course. Thanks again for having me on. Thanks for watching this video. If you want more great fantasy hockey and betting content from myself, Carter Hutton, Matthew Barnaby, and the rest of the DFO analysts, make sure you subscribe to the DFO fantasy and betting YouTube channel today and never miss a minute.
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Brock Seguin takes a deep dive into the Colorado Avalanche breaking down the 2025 Daily Faceoff Fantasy Projections and analyzing which player you should target and who to avoid in Fantasy this season. He’s joined by Aarif Deen to talk about who could break out, Gabriel Landeskog & MORE!
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