The Colorado Avalanche have the least amount of salary cap space as the NHL offseason officially begins on Wednesday.
While the Avs have been off the ice for six weeks, the rest of the league caught up on Tuesday, with the Florida Panthers winning the Stanley Cup for a second straight season. It puts pressure back on perennial Cup favorites Colorado to make the right moves this offseason to correct course and chase a championship. The issue is, the Avs won’t have a ton of room to play with.
At just $1.2 million of salary cap space, according to Spotrac, the Avs rank dead last at No. 32 for available salary room. That doesn’t even count some of the team’s productive players who are hitting the open market in a few weeks.
The team’s unrestricted free agents are as follows: Jonathan Drouin, Joel Kiviranta, Ryan Lindgren, Erik Johnson, Jere Innala, Jimmy Vesey, Jack Ahcan, Adam Scheel, T.J. Tynan, Calle Rosen, Matthew Phillips, and Chris Wagner.
None of those names are too major, though Kiviranta played almost every game for the team and Drouin, who was on amazing form at nearly a point per contest in the regular season. The truth is that the Avs already did a lot of their offseason work before the trade deadline, both by trading at-the-time pending free agent Mikko Rantanen, and clearing out draft picks for help right away. Colorado isn’t slated to pick at next week’s NHL Draft until late in the fourth round.
Still, Colorado is one of the favorites to hoist the Stanley Cup in 2026. While everyone can agree that the Avalanche need to be better and change some things, the core around Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar is locked in for the season.
Looking around at the other teams with precarious positions toward the salary cap limit shows that it’s some of the best teams in the league. Both the Dallas Stars and Tampa Bay Lightning join Colorado as the teams at the bottom for cap space, and each, like the Avs, are some of the bookmakers’ darlings for next year’s title.
Keep in mind, the Avs were just a period away from an appearance in the second round — ousted by a ticked-off Rantanen leading the Stars. Colorado has made the playoffs in eight straight seasons, but only advanced past Round 2 when they won the Stanley Cup in 2022. It will be a tightrope walk for Chris MacFarland in steering Colorado back to the top.
