Colorado Avalanche announce 2018 Development Camp roster

The Colorado Avalanche have announced their development camp roster. This is a chance for the club to bring in many, if not all of their prospects to a week or so of teaching, training, and evaluation that the players can take with them going into next season.

The camp will begin on Thursday June 28th, where players will take part in medical and physical testing so the coaches and trainers can get a baseline for their players. The next three days (Friday, Saturday, Sunday) will be skating sessions in the morning. Friday will also have an afternoon skate. All four of these skates will be free and open to the public, and will occur at the Family Sports Center.

A final chance to see the players on the ice will be a 3v3 game between the players in the blue arena at the Edlora Pool Ice Center in Fort Collins at 5:30pm. This game is also free and open to the public. Families are encouraged to attend. A full schedule of skates can be found here.

In terms of who will be in attendance, it’s a real who’s who of the best non-NHLers in the system. At forward, top draft picks like Martin Kaut, and Cam Morrison will be there, along with two very promising defense prospects in Cale Makar, and Connor Timmins, and two of the organization’s most recent goaltending acquisitions in Justus Annunen and Pavel Francouz. The full list can be found below, as well as a full roster list here.

There are three draft picks from the past three seasons who will not be in attendance. This includes 2018 5th rounder Danila Zhuravlyov, 2017 7th rounder Nick Leivermann, and 2016 6th rounder Nathan Clurman. Zhuravlyov is most likely staying with his Russian junior team and training with them, while the latter two players, Leivermann and Clurman, are high school students. And for the sake of completion, Tyson Jost is not there representing the 2016 draft because, well, he’s in the NHL.

AHL-contract prospects Josh Anderson, Travis Barron, and Josh Dickinson will be attending camp. They will be on the Colorado Eagles for next season. Czech goaltender Pavel Francouz may be 28-years-old but he will spend the next few days with the Avs organization at the camp in order to help him get acclimated to his new team. It is expected that he will play with the Eagles in 2018-19.

Colorado has also invited nine players to attend the camp. These are players whose rights are not owned by any NHL team, but tend to be brought to development and rookie camps by teams who might have interest in them once they finish junior hockey or whatever league they are currently in.

The invitees for the Avalanche consist of the following players (league, age).

Forwards: Matthew Boucher (QMJHL, 20), Robbie Holmes (WHL, 18), Vladislav Kotkov (QMJHL, 18), Logan O’Connor (NCHC, 21), and Cole Reinhardt (WHL, 18).

Defensemen: Alex Breton (QMJHL, 20), Kevin Davis (WHL, 21), Turner Ottenbreit (20, WHL/AHL) and Sean Strange* (WHL/MCU, 18).

*Not actually from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, unless he is...?