Nazem Kadri can’t be replaced.
The ship has sailed.
There will be no “legitimate” second line center (2C) joining the Colorado Avalanche anytime soon. It’s time to accept it and move on to a different strategy. This doesn’t mean stop attempting to improve the roster but the obsessive focus on finding a player to fulfill an ideal role without the resources to obtain it has led to multiple failures and continued to undermine the progress of building another championship contender.
Failure One: JT Compher
The first year after Nazem Kadri departed, the 2C reins were given to JT Compher and in hindsight his performance in that role was the best Colorado has enjoyed since lifting the Stanley Cup. So, the failure isn’t on Compher himself but on the organization for deeming it not good enough, letting Compher walk for nothing and then replacing him with inferior players with worse results.
Nobody will ever mistake Compher for a “traditional” 2C but with an expanded role in that 2022-23 season Compher hit a career high of 52 points in 82 games. All with an increase of over two minutes of 5v5 time on ice, a greater defensive role and significant increase in face-offs taken while maintaining a 52.65% share of expected goals. He could have been a cost-effective solution at his $5.1M price tag (or even less with a hometown discount) and insulated with other strong forwards in the lineup that resembled championship depth where asset and dollar resources could have been spent elsewhere.
Failure Two: Ryan Johansen
At the time acquiring Ryan Johansen season in a trade from the Nashville Predators for completely free and at a $4M salary for two years sounded like a great bargain and an acceptable solution to replace Compher for the 2023-24 season. Unfortunately it was too good to be true as Johansen was a complete disaster in Colorado with 14 total 5v5 points scored in 63 games after a brief hot streak on the power play. The analytics at 44.77% expected goals were unacceptable as well as his inability to engage physically to Jared Bednar’s liking. It cost a 2025 first round pick to get rid of Johansen (plus the brief services of defenseman Sean Walker as a rental) but this would not be the first instance of Colorado paying to rid of their mistakes.
Failure Three: Casey Mittelstadt
The brilliant idea to throttle Colorado’s competitive advantage on the back end by moving number three defenseman Bowen Byram for Casey Mittelstadt must not have passed by the pro scouts who should have known that the 26-year-old center’s passive and non-physical play wasn’t going to work for Bednar and his forecheck-heavy system but the Avalanche made the move anyway. Some early production to end the 2023-24 season masked these problems but when it was time to drive the second line to commence the 2024-25 season, Mittlestadt couldn’t keep up. Again, some quick points on the power play, just like Johansen, was an early distraction but subsequently a 43.84% expected goals with 21 points in 63 games at 5v5 it became more evident that Colorado had to move on.
Losing another trade was on the docket and the Avalanche chose to pay to move the final two years of Mittelstadt’s $5.75M AAV contract. All it took was the second round pick received from Carolina in exchange for Mikko Rantanen and former 2024 draft pick prospect forward William Zellers, who won USHL player of the year and USA Hockey’s Dave Tyler National Junior player of the year. All to receive 33-year-old center Charlie Coyle in return, who is at least a better style fit for Colorado, but has been deemed even at his $5.25M price tag for 2025-26 isn’t good enough to play 2C, thus the carousel keeps spinning.
Failure Four: Brock Nelson
Finally, even with the difficulties in fulfilling this elusive 2C position, the Avalanche decided at the 2025 trade deadline to use all remaining resources on a Hail Mary to rent 33-year-old center Brock Nelson to make it look like the 2C problem was solved. It only cost another first round pick and the single remaining top prospect Colorado had left, who coincidentally projects to be a right-handed second line center. Maybe prospect Calum Ritchie never fulfills that potential but he was the only chance Colorado had left of getting a young impact forward into their lineup much like their competitors.
Despite the cost, Nelson, too, couldn’t elevate the second line or drive play and finished with a sub-par 49.84% expected goals in the regular season. Results were better with Gabe Landeskog on his wing in the post season but the pair bottomed out with a 19.11% expected goals in the Game 7 loss to the Dallas Stars.
Now the choices are to hope Nelson’s 59 day stay in Colorado and diminished role with 49 seconds per game on the power play in the playoffs made enough of an impression on him to sign an extension. That contract is likely to be expensive with rumors of an asking price north of seven million dollars per year over a term longer than three years. For the Avalanche to even entertain meeting this price they would have to trade multiple roster players (and somehow replace them) to gain the ample cap space over their current projected $8.7M for next season to make this happen.
What Now?
There seems to be great difficulty in getting this Avalanche vision of a “second line” with 2C at the helm to not only produce consistently but hold their own analytically. Something has got to give. How many more failures and wasted resources needs to happen before accepting that if there was an easy, creative or cost-effective way to get a second line center in his prime able to help the Avalanche in their ideal 2C role it would have happened by now? Bednar clearly has a vision for a traditional second line center which does all the heavy lifting defensively the top line can’t do, takes important defensive zone draws, kills penalties yet also consistently produces at a rate worthy of a top-six forward role and price tag. Those players are fantastic to have but are usually core pieces on other teams or get paid a major premium in free agency.
A better plan is to look at how the depth of the teams still playing for the Stanley Cup is constructed and see that their approach focuses more on a top-nine forward group. Now, Nathan MacKinnon will always get a lot of time on ice in Colorado but the organization could look for a more modern approach and utilize what they have to configure a more balanced second and third line using Charlie Coyle and Ross Colton as their centers. It’s not like this duo is cheap either as they are scheduled to make a combined $9.25M next season. With a strong group of wingers including Martin Nečas, Val Nichushkin, Artturi Lehkonen and hopefully the continued use of Gabe Landeskog, Colorado can insulate and help drive play for a weaker center core. Is it ideal, no. But sometimes in life you have to work with what you have especially after repeated failures to find quick fixes.