Evan Rawal
For years, the Colorado Avalanche struggled to build a competitive defense.
Stefan Elliott. Cameron Gaunce. Colby Cohen. Duncan Siemens. You know the names. For what seemed like forever, Avalanche fans put faith in these higher draft picks, only for disappointment to follow. Trades, free agency, and the waiver wire were just as unsuccessful.
Enter Nolan Pratt.
Since Pratt came to town, it seems like every defenseman he gets his hands on gets better. And the Avalanche have benefitted greatly from it.
Starting in 2017, he has been able to max out of a lot of defensemen that struggled to find their footing elsewhere. Players picked up on waivers. Depth defensemen signed in free agency. Reclamation projects looking for a change of scenery. It doesn’t matter who they are. If the Avalanche have had to use them, Pratt has found a way to get the best out of them.
What’s the secret?
“He’s obviously a great coach and a great person,” Kurtis MacDermid told CHN. “He’s very easy to talk too and open up with, and I think that goes both ways. I think that’s a big part of a lot of defensemen getting better under his watch.”
MacDermid is one of those defenseman that has improved. When he got to Colorado, he struggled as a defenseman. As last season went on, you could see the improvement. He credits a lot of that improvement to the coaching of Pratt.
“It’s a non stop learning process at this level,” MacDermid said. “He’s been around the league a long time. Any positional stuff and reads, he’s helped me learn a lot about. Any knowledge I can take from him, it’s been a help so far.”
Everyone remembers that magical 2017-18 season for the Avalanche. Does everyone remember the defense the Avalanche rode down the stretch and into the playoffs? It wasn’t exactly pretty. Erik Johnson, who was logging 25+ minutes a night, missed all but six games in the final two months of the year.
It came down to Tyson Barrie, Nikita Zadorov, a 19 year old Sam Girard, Mark Barberio, Patrik Nemeth, and Siemens to get them into the playoffs, with a pinch of Anton Lindholm. The empty net goal that sealed it in “Game 82” came with two waiver wire pickups, Barberio and Nemeth, protecting the lead.
The Avalanche, and Pratt, got a lot from a little with that defense, but it was a sign of things to come. Since then, journeymen have come and go, and the Avalanche have been able to find ways to win with anyone on the backend. Injuries or no injuries, the show goes on. And the Avalanche have kept winning.
Whether it’s the Dan Renouf’s, Jacob MacDonald’s, Jack Johnsons, or now, Andreas Englund‘s, Pratt has found a way to make any defenseman fit in and play dependable hockey. A level of hockey those guys couldn’t find on other teams.
Perhaps his biggest win, in terms of development, was Ryan Graves. Picked up in a trade from the Rangers, he needed a fresh start. His numbers for the Colorado Eagles weren’t even that impressive, but he got the call to the Avalanche. Next thing you know, he’s jumping into the play, killing penalties, and before you know it, playing top four minutes with Cale Makar. The Avalanche turned Graves into a second round pick, which they used on Sean Behrens.
Acquired in a nothing swap, turned into an NHL defenseman, and traded for a high draft pick. A development win the organization could only dream of in years prior.
When he was acquired mid-season in 2017, a 19 year old Sam Girard, a veteran of five total NHL games up to that point, joined the team in Sweden. Without so much as a practice with the team, Girard was immediately placed on the top pairing. In seven of his first eight games with the team, he played well over 20 minutes.
It was the first time Pratt successfully transitioned a talented teenage defenseman to the NHL for the Avalanche, but it wouldn’t be the last. Since then, we’ve seen Makar and Bowen Byram jump in and immediately be allowed to play their game.
And that’s the key. Pratt understands that sometimes, you just have to let talented defensemen be who they are.
“He lets us play our game,” Girard told me. “You know, when we have a chance to play offense, we go. We don’t have any pressure with him, he just lets us play our game. I think that’s what makes him a good coach.”
Listen, Makar was probably going to be a superstar no matter who he played for. He was a special prospect. But special prospect or not, most NHL coaches are risk averse. They’ll usually ease a rookie defenseman into the NHL, much less a playoff game.
Not Pratt.
Makar was immediately allowed to be who he is, jumping into the rush in the first ten minutes of his first NHL game, and yelling at Nathan MacKinnon to drop the puck to him.
“He’s just a very calm presence on the back end there,” Makar told CHN. “He’s just going to kind of let you be and play your game. You want calm guys behind you and stuff like that. I feel like he’s good at analyzing the game on the bench and giving you pointers during the game. That’s one of his strengths.”
One of his other strengths? Positivity. That’s the sign of a modern coach.
“He’s super positive all the time. He just lets you play,” Brad Hunt said of Pratt.
“I think coaches nowadays, you’ve got to be positive,” Makar said. “I don’t think that the negativity works on anybody now. Obviously, he can be hard on guys at times and there’s a time for that, but at the same time, as far as the reinforcements if you make a good play, it can really boost confidence of certain guys.”
It would be wise not to overlook Pratt’s playing career. A veteran of 592 NHL games, he won two Stanley Cups as a player. One in Colorado, and one in Tampa Bay. No wonder he keeps finding ways to win as a coach.
“He played the game for a long time,” Bednar said about Pratt. “He always has a real accurate player perspective on what a ‘D’ is going through because of his experiences as a player and as a coach.”
Since day one, Pratt has been head coach Jared Bednar’s right hand man in Colorado. And their time together didn’t start with the Avalanche. The two have coached together since 2012, dating all the way back to their time on the Springfield Falcons bench. They won an AHL championship together in Lake Erie, and both found their way to Colorado the next year.
“I think he’s a real patient guy,” Bednar said. “We have been together a long time, so he knows the structure of what a ‘D’ needs to do under the system we teach. He has, I think, some give and take with all of his guys. He’s a good person, a good communicator, and guys like him. They want to make him happy on the back end and they know if they do the right things, it’ll lead to some success and he’s good at showing them that.”
At just 47 years old, it seems like just a matter of time before another franchise tries to pluck him away from the Avalanche. Until then, the Avalanche will reap the benefits of having a coach running the defense who understands how the modern game is played, and how to reach the modern player.
“A really good coach. Really good coach.”