Avalanche’s Lehkonen Injury Could Benefit These 3 Players
As if the Colorado Avalanche weren’t already going to be short-staffed to start the 2024-25 season due to the much-discussed Gabriel Landeskog and Valeri Nichushkin situations, top-six winger Artturi Lehkonen is set to miss the beginning of training camp due to offseason shoulder surgery.
Lehkonen has been an underrated part of the Avalanche’s success since arriving from the Montreal Canadiens at the 2022 NHL Trade Deadline. The 29-year-old has tallied 43 goals and 94 points in 125 regular-season games during his tenure in Colorado, representing an 82-game pace of 28 goals and 62 points. He’s elevated his play during the postseason, scoring 17 goals and 31 points in 38 playoff games and scored the series-winning goal in the 2022 Western Conference Final and the 2022 Stanley Cup Final.
If Lehkonen’s absence extends into the regular season, the Avalanche will be hard-pressed to find regular contributions from their wingers outside of Mikko Rantanen and Jonathan Drouin. As such, these three players will have an unexpected opportunity to break into the top-six forward group to start the campaign.
Nikolai Kovalenko
There is arguably no player who will benefit more from the absence of Lehkonen (and Nichushkin and Landeskog for that matter) than 24-year-old winger Nikolai Kovalenko. The Avalanche’s sixth-round pick from 2018 has played in the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL) since being drafted, but finally signed a contract with the organization late last season.
Kovalenko scored three points in four regular-season games with the Colorado Eagles in the American Hockey League (AHL) before appearing in a pair of playoff games with the Avalanche, going pointless. After 32 goals and 89 points in 98 KHL games over the past two seasons, the time is now for the Russian to make his mark in the NHL as a dark-horse
Kovalenko is best placed in a scoring role and should have that opportunity with only a few names clearly ahead of him on Colorado’s depth chart. A regular role on the secondary powerplay unit should also be in the cards for the rookie forward and he’ll be under pressure to perform before the Avalanche’s injured or suspended forwards are cleared for action. In the same vein, he may never get the same opportunity again and will have no one to blame but himself if he fails to make an impact.
Calum Ritchie
While he is most likely to be a center at the NHL level, Calum Ritchie could use the Rookie Faceoff as a launching point to an extended stint in the NHL at one of the Avalanche’s vacant winger spots. Outside of Kovalenko, he would not have to compete with many other wingers for a top-nine spot in which he could play to his strengths.
Drouin and Rantanen are top-six mainstays for now, Miles Wood and Logan O’Connor are fixtures on the third line, with the rest being NHL-AHL tweeners or prospects who have not shown much in limited action.
Ritchie is coming off of a productive 2023-24 season with the Oshawa Generals of the Ontario Hockey League (OHL) who he led in scoring with 28 goals and 80 points in 50 games. He ranked sixth among all OHL skaters in both assists-per-game (1.04) and points-per-game (1.60). The Generals were swept by the London Knights in the OHL Championship Series but he nearly dragged them to a title with eight goals and 30 points in 21 playoff games.
At this point, a nine-game tryout is all but a given and he may force the Avalanche to burn the first year of his entry-level contract (ELC) if he plays at a level beyond his years and Lehkonen’s absence lingers into the season.
