Avalanche early favorite to win 2021 Stanley Cup

The 2019-20 NHL season is finally over, and the Tampa Bay Lightning are your newly crowned champions. But if you think it’s too early to get your bets down for the 2021 Stanley Cup champ, you’d be wrong. Sites such as DraftKings already have their odds for next season’s champ already, and guess who is listed with the best odds to win? That’s right, the Avalanche.

The Avalanche is +800 to win the Stanley Cup next year (what that means is, if you bet $100 and the Avs win, you win your $100 back, plus $800). Tampa Bay and Vegas have the next-best odds, at +1000. At +325, the Avalanche is the favorite to win the Western Conference, with Vegas second at +350. St. Louis and Dallas are third and fourth, at +800 and +900.

I will go along with these odds right now, and agree that the Avalanche should be the favorite to win the Stanley Cup next year. But I do think there need to be a couple of changes in the off-season. I’m on record as saying I think they need to at least strongly consider a new No. 1 goalie, and there will be some good names on the open market soon. I also think they need another strong defenseman, with the good possibility that this was Nikita Zadorov’s final year with the Avs, Erik Johnson’s advancing age and injury concerns and uncertainty as to whether Bo Byram and/or Conor Timmins will be ready for a full NHL season next year.

That’s why I don’t think it’s outlandish at all to speculate that the Avs will be among the bidders for potentially available D-men such as Alex Pietrangelo or Torey Krug.

It’s going to be an interesting off-season I think.