Question from Peter

Do you think head coach Jared Bednar will actually play the young guys more to get a good look at them? And if he does, do you think Joe Sakic had something to do with it? It would be a total flip-flop for Bedsy if he plays them, so I can’t see him changing unless Joe made a “recommendation.”

Aarif’s Response

I truly do believe Bednar will give the younger guys a chance this season, and I also believe Sakic will have had something to do with it. But I can also see Bednar being part of that decision.

Coaching and management are always connected, especially given Bednar’s nearly decade-long relationship with Sakic and his relationship with Chris MacFarland before he left for Nashville.

Basically, I don’t believe Sakic went into this offseason thinking the Avalanche needed younger options and then went out and acquired Fedor Svechkov, Zachary L’Heureux, and Fabian Lysell on his own. I don’t think he looked at T.J. Hughes and Matthew DiMarsico and penciled them in as options without talking to the coaching staff. I also don’t think he traded Valeri Nichushkin and Ross Colton and automatically decided it was Gavin Brindley’s time without any input from Bednar.

The Avalanche were swept out of the Western Conference Final and MacFarland left shortly after that. Even with the unfortunate passing of Claude Lemieux taking up some of Sakic’s time, he didn’t go into the offseason and start making all of these decisions without having long conversations with the rest of the front office and his coaching staff.

They likely collectively came to this decision.

Whether playing younger players was Bednar’s first choice or not, everyone had to be on board before these moves were made. There’s just too strong of a relationship here for this to be a situation where the GM makes a bunch of moves and forces the coach into decisions he doesn’t want to make.

We’ve seen what that can look like. Mike Babcock and Kyle Dubas in Toronto had a relationship that was clearly strained, and you could see it from the outside. That’s not what we have in Colorado with Sakic and Bednar. 

Now, Bednar has gotten away from playing younger players in recent years. But a lot of that, quite frankly, was also because of the options he had ahead of them.

Let’s not forget that he gave Nikolai Kovalenko (albeit in a short window) a pretty big opportunity when he didn’t have as much veteran depth in front of him. He played Ivan Ivan a lot early in that same 2024-25 season.

Alternatively, he helped develop a young, raw talent like Nichushkin many years ago. He allowed Sam Malinski to grow into what he’s become. Same with Logan O’Connor.

This isn’t a coach who is completely against playing young players. He’s a coach who, like the team, evolved into more of a win-now mentality. When you’re trying to win a Stanley Cup every year, developing younger players naturally becomes less of a priority. We saw the team get further away from that with each passing year. 

And even then, he gave Gavin Brindley an opportunity early last season before the young forward’s game started to dip. The year prior, he gave Justus Annunen plenty of starts and time to develop before the goaltender struggled and was eventually dealt for Scott Wedgewood.

He’s done this before. He’ll get plenty of opportunities to do it again this season.

Whether it was Sakic’s decision, Bednar’s decision, or a suggestion from someone else in the front office like Andrew Cogliano, I don’t think that really matters. The organization collectively decided this was the direction it wanted to go.

And based on the moves they made this summer, I just can’t see it happening any other way.

With all of that being said, it’s still a results-based business. Bednar doesn’t have a contract after the 2026-27 season. When I asked Sakic about it in June, he said it would be something they’d get to later in the summer.

The relationship isn’t strained, but if Bednar doesn’t put pen to paper on a new deal before the season begins, it’s likely a sign that Sakic expects more from this club. He’s challenging the coach to win another championship and to do it while going into a contract year before committing to anything longer than that.

Developing young talent will go a long way towards this team’s success.