The Kroenkes sent shockwaves through Denver when they decided to can Nuggets coach Michael Malone and general manager Calvin Booth this past April. You can bet those shockwaves were felt down the hallway.

Standards are high for the Colorado Avalanche, and with just one series win since lifting Lord Stanley in 2022, they’ve fallen short of those standards the last few seasons. Those same standards exist on the opposite side of the building with the Nuggets, and when that team floundered late this past season, Josh Kroenke did not hesitate to make big changes at the top. Kroenke, who is more “hands-off” with the Avalanche than he is with the Nuggets, might not stay that way if the Avalanche bow out early again in the spring.

Make no mistake, coach Jared Bednar and general manager Chris MacFarland are both very good at what they do. Every coach and executive in this league have a shelf life, though.

While no coach is ever perfect, Bednar, who will begin his 10th season behind the Avalanche bench next month, is one of the best in the NHL. The average tenure for NHL coaches is a little over two years, far and away the lowest among all professional sports. There’s a good reason why his tenure has lasted so long in Denver.

Several, actually.

Over the last six years, the Avalanche have never finished lower than eighth in the league at regular season’s end. They’re a good team, often keeping their head above water when dealing with many injuries. Bednar deserves plenty of credit for that. If he ever hit the coaching market, he’d have job offers within seconds of becoming available.

In a league where players tend to tune out coaches quickly, Bednar’s message hasn’t gone stale with his team’s core. While some fans want the 53-year-old to show a bit more fire behind the bench, that’s not his style, although his postgame pressers have gotten a bit more fiery in recent years.

Bednar led that 2022 Avalanche squad to the promised land and has won at every level he’s coached at. Still, there’s a sense that a team that employs arguably two of the three best players in the world has underachieved. Regular season success is great, but at the stage this team is currently at, all that people really care about is what happens when the playoffs roll around.

Outside of 2022, the Bednar-led Avalanche have never made it past the second round and have only advanced beyond the first once in the last three seasons. Only one team ends the season truly happy every year, but a team that employs Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar in the primes of their careers is expected to play a little longer into the spring.

With MacFarland, a lot of his best work came when he didn’t necessarily get credit for it. As Joe Sakic’s right-hand man, he played a big role in helping build that 2022 team. He wasn’t the GM, but his hand was in everything. When Sakic handed the GM reigns over to MacFarland after that 2022 Stanley Cup victory, the New York native immediately had to deal with two major issues – a stagnant salary cap and immediate uncertainty around captain Gabriel Landeskog.

In the two years after the Avalanche won the Stanley Cup, the cap went up by a whopping $2 million thanks to the lingering effects of COVID. He would have killed to have a $7.5 million jump over two seasons, let alone one, but you deal with the cards you’re dealt. Making things more difficult was the fact that Landeskog went from only being expected to miss a few months to suddenly missing three seasons, with a few “will he or won’t he” moments in between to complicate the matter.

Handicaps aside, his moves have been hit and miss. His mid-season shuffling in net last year seems to have finally stabilized the situation between the pipes and the Devon Toews extension looks like a steal when compared to other deals around the league. On the flip side, the Bowen Byram trade tree is ugly, the Ryan Johansen experiment ended with them adding a premium asset to get rid of him, and Miles Wood’s contract needed to be dumped with four years left on it.

And then, of course, there’s the Mikko Rantanen trade, a move that may define his tenure in Colorado. Martin Necas and Jack Drury could both go out and have career seasons, but until the pain of Rantanen ending Colorado’s season in May is eradicated, there’s going to be a black mark on MacFarland’s resume…fairly or unfairly.

Your daily report on everything sports in Colorado – covering the Denver Broncos, Denver Nuggets, Colorado Avalanche, and columns from Woody Paige and Paul Klee.

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The Avalanche are still very much built to win right now. Given the return of Landeskog, more certainty around Valeri Nichushkin, Brock Nelson’s presence in the lineup, and stable goaltending, this team will start the year in as good a position as they’ve been in since winning the Cup. That means expectations will be (and should be) through the roof, with the pressure to win as high as it’s ever been.

And if they fall short of those expectations again, the Kroenke’s might have no choice but to look at sweeping changes on this side of the building.

What I’m hearing

— Checked in on the Necas negotiations and was told by a source that it’s “all quiet.” It takes one phone call to change things in a situation like this.

— I think the Avalanche will be heavily monitoring the waiver-wire during camp and preseason for a left-shot defenseman. A guy like Jon Merril makes a lot of sense as a potential PTO.

What I’m seeing

— Very interested to see how Victor Olofsson fits in Colorado. There’s very little risk in signing him to a one-year deal. I do wonder about the fit, though. He’s historically been a one-dimension shooter in his career, but his underlying numbers defensively last year were tremendous. How much of that was Vegas and how much of that was Olofsson? He saw significant time with each of Tomas Hertl, Jack Eichel, and William Karlsson, all three of which are very good defensive centers.

He could get a look on the top power play unit as the shooter in Rantanen’s old spot, but there will be a lot of competition for minutes on that top unit. There’s a part of me that wonders if this ends like Tomas Tatar’s tenure in Colorado ended where he just couldn’t cut it in the bottom six, but even that signing saw the Avalanche gain a draft pick. That’s why there’s very little risk in a signing like this and quite a bit of upside if it works out.

— You know it’s been a slow offseason when Olofsson signing is the biggest NHL news in weeks.

What I’m thinking

— Will be great to be in the building this weekend for the Avalanche/Pioneers alumni game at Magness Arena. I’ll still take time out of my day to watch Peter Forsberg play hockey, even at the age of 52.

— With Olofsson signed, I’d think the last roster spot comes down to Zakhar Bardakov and Matt Stienburg while Logan O’Connor recovers from surgery. Two big bodies who both can be used on the penalty kill. Stienburg didn’t look out of place during his short NHL stint last year.