Avalanche winger hoping to build on career year to miss time

The Avalanche will be without top-six winger Jonathan Drouin likely through the end of the month. He’s already missed the last two games with an upper-body injury and has now been ruled out through at least Oct. 28, head coach Jared Bednar said on 92.5 FM Altitude Sports Radio on Wednesday morning (via Adrian Hernandez of Mile High Hockey).

Drouin sustained the injury in Colorado’s season-opening 8-4 loss to the Golden Knights last week, in which he skated over 21 minutes but was held off the scoresheet and posted a -1 rating. It was an inauspicious start to Drouin’s second campaign in Denver after last year saw the 2013 third-overall pick post a career-high 37 assists and 56 points in 79 games, primarily playing alongside former junior hockey teammate Nathan MacKinnon.

The Quebec native signed a one-year, $2.5M deal to stick with the Avs for another year and was expected to again play a crucial secondary scoring role, especially with three of Colorado’s top four wingers — Gabriel Landeskog, Artturi Lehkonen and Valeri Nichushkin — unavailable to start the season. If the Avalanche’s wing depth outside of Mikko Rantanen wasn’t completely decimated with those absences, it is now with Drouin set to miss at least the team’s next six games. Usual third-line center Ross Colton has slid up to first-line left wing to ride shotgun with MacKinnon and Rantanen in Drouin’s absence, while Casey Mittelstadt’s second line has rookie Calum Ritchie and bottom-six fixture Miles Wood on the flanks.

Accordingly, it’s been a tough start for the Avs. They and the Predators are the league’s last two remaining teams without a point, both going 0-3-0. They’re allowing an unbelievably high 6.67 goals against per game so far, although that has more to do with goalie Alexandar Georgiev’s struggles (.790 SV%, -6.6 GSAA) than their lack of scoring depth.

Drouin is still expected to be the first back in the lineup out of the group of missing wingers, assuming he passes his Oct. 28 evaluation. Lehkonen also won’t be evaluated until the end of the month while still recovering from offseason shoulder surgery, while Nichushkin isn’t eligible to return from Stage 3 of the NHL/NHLPA Player Assistance Program until Nov. 13 at the earliest. Landeskog still has no timeline for a return from the multiple knee surgeries that have put his career on pause ever since their 2022 Stanley Cup win.