Well, that’s the history, here’s the future: no first round pick for the Colorado Avalanche this year. It went to Columbus in the Adam Foote deal (assuming he signs). Nobody else has joined Wolski from his draft class with the big club yet, and nobody from SOS’s class has shown up for the big time yet either.

The Avs lost the 1st rounder no matter what. They lose an additional 4th rounder if Foote signs

a lot of OMG AVS SUCK AT DRAFTING THE SKY IS FALLING posts. A lot of times players just take a while to develop, and yes, sometimes the draft is just a crap shoot. Still, I’m pretty sure that we’re doing fine when looking at the list of draftees with the team:

Budaj - 2nd ‘01
Finger - 8th ‘99
Foote - 2nd ‘89
Forsberg - 1st ‘91 (ok, technically it was the flyers)
Hejduk - 4th ‘94
Hensick - 3rd ‘05
Jones - 9th(!!!) ‘03
Liles - 5th ‘00
McCormick - 5th ‘01
McLeod - undrafted
Parker - 1st ‘98 (lol)
Richardson - 5th ‘03
Sakic - 1st ‘87
Sauer - 3rd ‘00
Stastny - 2nd ‘05
Stewart - 1st ‘06
Svatos - 7th ‘01
Weiman - 5th ‘02
Wolski—1st ‘04

that’s 19 of 30 players I think are “with the team” in some fashion. I would think that’s a pretty good number, and there’s a lot of big time players in there. ‘04 does seem to be an absent draft, but hey, you win some, you lose some.

I love the fact I know hardly any of the Sharks draft picks. Makes me feel the avs are that much better.

Ignorance is Bliss

I think the Avs do a better than average job of drafting in the NHL.

The problem was that prior to the lockout, Lacroix used the prospect system as a pure commodity for establishing better NHL talent rather than a petree dish for developing NHL talent. I think the issue is that none of those trades injected the team with new core veteran talent outside of the Bourque deal. The Bourque deal was worth the rental of course but even Bourque couldn’t be considered a intricate core player for the future.

PL has said in the past (and I agree with this 100%) that you have to identify your core players and then everything else is just complimentary players to make that work. His core (pre-CBA mind you) was Roy, Sakic, Forsberg and Foote. Everyone else was expendable. Young NHL players, prospects and draft picks were jettisoned to do it.

The current core of the team is Stastny, Smyth and Hannan. Those are your long-term guys with bigger contracts going forward (Statsny is an assumption of course). Sakic is now on a year to year basis. Foote is probably on a 3 year retirement schedule.

To me you need to establish your starting goaltender, unfortunately for the Avs there is no one in the goalie pipeline that is the clearly established #1 prospect. That’s a big problem the Avs need to address in the draft or through trades. It would be worth trading assets to establish that position in the prospect pool. I’d love to see the Avs trade with Phoenix for Montoya. Phoenix has scary goaltending depth with Ilya Bryzgalov, Mikael Tellqvist, Al Montoya and Josh Tordjman. I like how the rest of the pipeline is set up already with Galardi, Mercier, Hensick, Jones and Stewart in the near future. For the defense you’ve got to wait 2 to 3 years on Shattenkirk and Cohen. However, if Foote and Finger sign you got probably another 3 years from both of them. We are stuck with Hannan until the year 2060 as well. There’s a good chance that Nigel Williams will be ready to get a NHL taste late this year or next also.

I think a lot of people are in a panic of drafting. All I’ve read is that the Avs need to go out and draft a Swede like right now. They have to trade up and draft in the first round no less! I know that Detroit seems like the perfect storm of Euro talent but their top guys aren’t even top draft picks! The Avs should follow their strengths with North American picks in the first few rounds and then give Euro scouting some picks in later rounds. If they can find some gems then you take a chance on higher picks in the future. The Avs put a lot of faith in Euro scouting with Jonas Johannson and it was a complete waste. I like the position the Avs are in. The coaching and goaltending need consistency and I think the team will be in a much better position next year.

The Colorado Avalanche have signed 29 year old Per Ledin of the Swedish Elitserien. The deal is believed to be a one-year, one-way, $600,000 contract.