Avs Still Have Work to Do After Coyle, Wood, and Brindley Trade

The Colorado Avalanche didn’t have a first-round pick in the 2025 NHL Draft, but they still made an impact on Draft Day. Miles Wood and Charlie Coyle were traded to the Columbus Blue Jackets for forward Gavin Brindley, a third-round pick in this year’s draft and a conditional 2027 second-round pick.

“Going back to his draft year, he’s a high-motor, tenacious player that plays with really good pace. That book has just traveled and followed him to pro hockey,” Avs GM Chris MacFarland said about the 20-year-old Florida native on Friday at a media conference. “When we were talking with them, he was a player that our pro scouts piggybacked on to what our amateur side was seeing and thought it was a good player that plays the way we like to play.”

The move freed up $7.75 million and added a highly-touted prospect to the development pool. But there are still moves to be made for the team to solidify its bottom six. The top six are locked in with Gabe Landeskog’s return and multi-year contracts for Nathan MacKinnon, Valeri Nichushkin, Artturi Lehkonen and Brock Nelson. Martin Necas is in the final year of his contract this upcoming season. The unknown is Jonathan Drouin, who is an unrestricted free agent come July 1.

The Avs were eliminated in the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs in seven games by the Dallas Stars. MacFarland and president of hockey operations, Joe Sakic, said in their end-of-the-season exit conference that they felt they had the team to win a Stanley Cup. Offseason changes were undoubtedly going to be made.

“When you have expectations to try and win, you’re going to make decisions on trying to win. I think that’s what we’ve done and this year it didn’t work,” MacFarland said. “We all still feel the sting of that, but we feel we have a good hockey team and a competitive team, and it just didn’t work.”

Avalanche management still has work to do. MacFarland mentioned that a qualifying offer needed to be made to defenseman Sam Malinski, along with “holes” in the roster requiring attention.

“We’ve got (Zakhar) Bardakov coming over, so we’re excited to see what he can do in that mix in training camp. We know what we’ve got in terms of cap space and roster holes, so you do the math, you try and figure out what’s the average that we can spend and how do we put it together and make the math work,” MacFarland said. “We’ll look at anything we can to improve, including the back end. The only area really that we’re probably set as we sit tonight is in net.”

Colorado has one pick each in the third, fourth, and seventh rounds in this year’s draft. Stay tuned for more action in the near future.