The Avalanche announced following Thursday night\u2019s win over the Jets that they\u2019ve reassigned right-winger\u00a0Gavin Brindley\u00a0to AHL Colorado.<\/p>\n
Brindley, 21, has not yet played in the AHL this season but was sent to the Eagles for a few hours at the trade deadline to make him eligible for reassignment down the stretch. He had played in every game for the Avs since Jan. 3 before exiting the lineup for this week\u2019s games against Pittsburgh and Winnipeg, falling victim to a roster crunch created by the returns of\u00a0Logan O\u2019Connor,\u00a0Ross Colton, and\u00a0Artturi Lehkonen\u00a0from injuries.<\/p>\n
The undersized but high-energy winger impressed early in a depth role in Colorado this season after being acquired from the Blue Jackets last summer in the deal that sent Charlie Coyle\u00a0and\u00a0Miles Wood\u00a0to Columbus. An early second-round selection in 2023 (34th overall), Brindley has a 6-7\u201313 scoring line in 56 games but only has two points and a -6 rating over his last 25 outings, so he\u2019s hit a tough stretch in the second half of the year.<\/p>\n
Colorado saw enough out of Brindley to sign him to a cost-effective two-year, $1.75MM extension back in November. He still has another season of waiver-exempt status after this one, so, especially considering they structured the first year of that extension as a two-way deal, he may still see some AHL time in 2026-27 before ideally transitioning to a full-time role in a couple of years.<\/p>\n
The Florida native was a star offensive producer at the University of Michigan but struggled as a first-year pro in the Columbus organization last season, limited to a 6-11\u201317 scoring line in 52 AHL games. Given how he\u2019s fared in his NHL minutes this season, Brindley should be in line for an expanded role with the Eagles with a corresponding increase in production.<\/p>\n
The Avs have carried a thin roster through much of the season, so the fact they only have 13 healthy forwards without Brindley on the roster isn\u2019t anything new. His demotion is less about resolving a roster crunch and more about getting the still-developing winger some playing time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Avalanche announced following Thursday night\u2019s win over the Jets that they\u2019ve reassigned right-winger\u00a0Gavin Brindley\u00a0to AHL Colorado. Brindley,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":526695,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5116],"tags":[193,192,144,5277,5,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-526694","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-colorado-avalanche","8":"tag-avalanche","9":"tag-colorado","10":"tag-colorado-avalanche","11":"tag-coloradoavalanche","12":"tag-hockey","13":"tag-nhl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116304005306113290","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=526694"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526694\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/526695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=526694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=526694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=526694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}