Amidst numerous injuries to regular lineup players, the Colorado Avalanche announced today that they have recalled forward Tristen Nielsen and defenseman Jack Ahcan from their AHL affiliate, the Colorado Eagles. The moves come after several updates to injured Avalanche players were reported earlier today by Guerilla Sports’ Jesse Montano: forward Gavin Brindley has been managing a concussion, Logan O’Connor is “progressing” but will remain out, and Samuel Girard is a possibility to return to the ice this weekend.
In recalling Nielsen, the Avalanche have given themselves an additional forward option to work with while O’Connor and Brindley remain injured. The Avalanche have been running an extremely inexperienced fourth line: two of the three players (Zakhar Bardakov and Taylor Makar) have played in a combined nine total career NHL games, and combine for less than 30 games of experience playing professional hockey in North America.
By recalling Nielsen, 25, the Avalanche have given head coach Jared Bednar a more experienced option to potentially pencil into his fourth line. While Nielsen doesn’t have any NHL experience just yet, he does have nearly 250 games of AHL experience, and has won a Calder Cup championship.
Nielsen also positioned himself for an early-season recall with a tremendously successful preseason performance: he tied for the lead among Avalanche forwards in goal scoring with two in his three preseason contests, to go along with one assist.
There were those in Vancouver’s media sphere who believed Nielsen had done enough in the AHL to earn a call-up in Vancouver, but the opportunity to make his NHL debut never materialized for the tenacious winger. But through his strong preseason performance and solid start to his AHL season (he ranks third on AHL Colorado with nine points in 11 games) he has put himself in a position to finally get into an NHL game in Colorado.
On defense, Girard’s lingering injury means that the team, before this recall, only had six healthy defensemen on its roster. By recalling Ahcan, they’ve given themselves a spare blueliner to provide insurance in case any of their regular blueliners is unfit to play.
With the team set to host the Tampa Bay Lightning tomorrow and Girard reportedly not ready to return until this weekend, keeping a seventh defenseman is an important move to ensure the Avalanche don’t get into a tough spot in case an unexpected injury or other reason for unavailability on defense were to pop up.
Ahcan, 28, is a 5’8″ left-shot defenseman bringing 279 games of AHL experience and 13 games of NHL experience to the table. Ahcan has been a quality producer from the blueline at just about every level he’s played at on a full-time basis, and he has scored at a 40-point 72-game pace over the course of his AHL career.
The Avalanche’s current third-pairing left-shot blueliner is Ilya Solovyov, a big stay-at-home defenseman who the team plucked off of waivers on Oct. 3. This recall gives Bednar the option to swap Solovyov with Ahcan should he prefer to ice a third pairing with a little less size and a little more offensive ability than it would have with Solovyov in the lineup.
Photos courtesy of Walter Tychnowicz-USA TODAY Sports