At Thursday afternoon\u2019s Colorado Avalanche season-ending press conference, president of hockey operations and interim general manager Joe Sakic confirmed that the Avs will not be making a coaching change. Head coach Jared Bednar will remain behind the bench for the 2026-27 season. And neither of his assistants will change, either.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s back. All the coaching staff are back, they\u2019re all under contract, and no plans to make any moves,\u201d Sakic said. \u201cFeel he\u2019s the best coach for our team.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dave Hakstol, who was hired last summer to lead the forwards and the power play, is among the returnees. In his first season in Colorado, the Avalanche\u2019s power play finished 27th in the regular season.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know the guys appreciate his work. He\u2019s an experienced coach. If you\u2019re going with the power play, I\u2019m kind of with you a little bit. Our power play overall, it wasn\u2019t as good as it could have been,\u201d Sakic said. \u201cWe made a change last year in that position, it didn\u2019t work, but I will say once we got [Nazem Kadri] and filled that role on the other side, it was much better after the trade deadline.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought the power play was pretty good the first two rounds, and like our entire game, it was quiet against Vegas. But that was more of an entire unit, whether it\u2019s PK, five on five, or power play, we didn\u2019t get the job done in that last week. We have to be better in certain areas, and that\u2019s an area that we\u2019re going to be better.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bednar is in the final season of a three-year contract extension he signed in 2023. Traditionally, coaches of his stature don\u2019t usually enter the final year of their deal without an extension in place. It doesn\u2019t sound like the idea of having a lame duck coach is top of mind for the organization.<\/p>\n
Sakic did, however, open the possibility for an extension later in the summer for Bednar, albeit he left it up in the air.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe haven\u2019t thought about that,\u201d he said. \u201cRight now, the priority is getting through the draft and free agency. Try and make our team as good as possible going into the summer. The rest of the stuff we will push down the line. We\u2019ll figure out later in the summer on all that stuff, but I don\u2019t think he\u2019s worried about it. He shouldn\u2019t be worried about it. The contracts will come when they come.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bednar led the Avalanche to a 55-16-11 record, finishing with a franchise-best 121 points and the fourth Presidents\u2019 Trophy in Colorado\u2019s 30-year history. The Avs also went 8-1 through the first two rounds of the playoffs for the first time in franchise history.<\/p>\n
The four-game series loss to the Golden Knights was the third time their season ended in a sweep, and the first since 2008.<\/p>\n
The decision to keep Bednar didn\u2019t seem like a difficult one for the front office. When they completed player exit interviews, the confidence in the head coach remained high.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cI think he has absolute belief of the dressing room,\u201d KSE Vice Chairman Josh Kroenke said. <\/p>\n
Added Sakic: \u201cHe\u2019s got the confidence from the players. We do reflect exit meetings. It\u2019s clear from everybody, from players, the staff, that he\u2019s the right guy. They respect him, they love playing for him, and that\u2019s a big thing. He\u2019s the best coach for the group, and we\u2019re confident in that decision. He\u2019s the voice of the organization, and, like I said, the players really believe in him, and I\u2019m going with the players.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At Thursday afternoon\u2019s Colorado Avalanche season-ending press conference, president of hockey operations and interim general manager Joe Sakic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":598464,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5116],"tags":[193,192,144,5277,5,1117,4444,4],"class_list":["post-598463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-colorado-avalanche","tag-avalanche","tag-colorado","tag-colorado-avalanche","tag-coloradoavalanche","tag-hockey","tag-jared-bednar","tag-joe-sakic","tag-nhl"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116747269808316490","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598463","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=598463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598463\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/598464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=598463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=598463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=598463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}