Evan Rawal
It’s not easy playing center in the NHL. The amount of responsibility on the plate of someone playing down the middle in the best league in the world is enormous, and not everyone can handle it. That’s why you see so many players who were drafted as centers end up on the wing when they take that next step. Ross Colton is one of those players who was a center at a younger age, but has spent most of his time in the NHL at wing. The Colorado Avalanche targeted him with the belief that he could transition back to the position he played when he was drafted.
A little over halfway through the year, they’re very happy with his progress.
“He’s getting better,” Jared Bednar said of Colton. “I think it was a lot for him early in the year in exhibition, but he went to work.”
Acquired over the summer for a second round pick from the Tampa Bay Lightning, Colton has essentially become the de-facto second line center of the Avalanche. He’s on pace to set a career high in points, and his ice-time has been trending up. Colton has been paired with fellow off-season acquisition Miles Wood pretty much every night, and when joined by Logan O’Connor, they’ve been dominant as a trio.
No, that’s not an exaggeration.
In 188 minutes together, the line has controlled 57.37% of the shot attempts when they’re on the ice. For comparisons sake, those numbers are almost identical to what the trio of Valeri Nichushkin, Nathan MacKinnon, and Mikko Rantanen has done together.
So yeah, not bad.
The energy line, centered by Colton, has outscored the opposition 11-7, and they’ve been a nightmare for other teams to handle. They don’t exactly get the most generous deployment either, as they start the majority of their shifts in the defensive zone.
For now, it is their second line. The guy who was supposed to be the second line center, Ryan Johansen, has had a tough go of it on the ice, but he’s still as good a teammate as you’ll find in the NHL.
He’s been impressed with Colton’s transition back full time to playing down the middle, and knows just as well as anyone that playing center in the NHL is not easy.
“It can be really tough,” Johansen told me. “Basically, your whole mindset of how to play, and your whole muscle memory of things you’re so used to doing is just kind of flipped, so it can be tough. I think he’s doing a really good job though, especially in the face-off department. He’s really impressed me with that, he’s done a really good job on the dot. There’s a role on our team for that important position, and I think he’s the guy for it. It’s just about continuing to improve and at that spot and getting as comfortable as you possibly can.”
For Colorado’s sake, it’s a good thing Colton has adjusted to the position as the season has gone on. Through 47 games, Johansen has just nine 5-on-5 points, which matches the total of fourth line center Fredrik Olofsson. Like Colton, Olofsson had never played center full-time in the NHL, so the Avalanche certainly took some risks down the middle heading into the 2023-24 campaign.
The top line drives the bus for the Avalanche, but it’s tough to imagine where they would be without Colton, especially given Johansen’s struggles. In a perfect world, he’s centering the third line by the time playoffs start, as everyone and their mother knows GM Chris MacFarland is hunting for a second line center, but that energy trio has won the Avalanche some games this season.
The coaching staff has spent a lot of time working with Colton about the details of playing center, but the player has to put in the work for it all to come together.
That has not been an issue with Colton.
“We’ve spent a bunch of time with video on him, showing him clips where to be, what to do,” Bednar said. “He studies the game pretty hard, and he’s putting in the effort to get better. I think that he still has his moments, but I love the progress that he’s shown over the course of the season if he can play center. There’s a lot of strengths to his game that says he can, so we’re going to stick with it.”
Colton knows the work isn’t done. If anything, this is just the beginning.
“It’s still a process, and (I’m) still working on it.”