Colorado Avalanche left wing Jonathan Drouin. Lucas Peltier-Imagn Images
The Avalanche have taken left wingers Jonathan Drouin and Miles Wood off injured reserve ahead of Friday’s game against the Capitals, the team announced. It reassigned forwards T.J. Tynan and Nikita Prishchepov to AHL Colorado early Thursday morning to create roster space.
Colorado, as previously reported, is also getting Valeri Nichushkin back in the lineup now that he’s served his six-month suspension, as dictated by Stage 3 of the NHL/NHLPA Player Assistance Program.
That means three regular forwards — two of them top-six pieces — are coming in to aid an Avalanche group that’s been decimated by injuries so far in 2024-25.
Drouin, 29, suffered an upper-body injury in the season opener and hasn’t played since. The winger was initially only ticketed to miss a few games but ended up missing over five weeks with the ailment.
Signed as an unrestricted free agent in 2023, Drouin has thrived in Colorado while playing alongside former major junior teammate Nathan MacKinnon. After initially inking a one-year, $825K pact, he recorded career-highs in assists (37), points (56), rating (+12) and ATOI (18:11) in 2023-24. He then signed a one-year, $2.5M deal shortly after free agency opened this past summer to return to Denver.
For most of the campaign to date, the Avs had been without all of Drouin, Nichushkin, Gabriel Landeskog and Artturi Lehkonen — leaving them without four of their top five wingers.
Now, just Landeskog remains unavailable as he continues to attempt a comeback from the multiple knee surgeries that have kept him out of action since the 2022 Stanley Cup Final. Lehkonen returned to action earlier this month after offseason shoulder surgery and already has six points in five games.
Drouin is expected to make his second appearance of the season on Colorado’s top line alongside MacKinnon and Mikko Rantanen. Nichushkin will return in a second-line role alongside Lehkonen and Casey Mittelstadt.
Meanwhile, Wood makes his return to the lineup after missing the last seven games with an upper-body injury. The 29-year-old is in his second season with the Avalanche after inking a six-year, $15M commitment in free agency in 2023. He had just one goal in 10 games before exiting the lineup but was averaging 13:40 per game, a deployment that will allow overtaxed youngsters like Ivan Ivan and Nikolai Kovalenko to face some easier competition along with Drouin’s and Nichushkin’s returns.
After all of Thursday’s moves, the Avs’ active roster stands at the maximum of 23 players. They have about $1.185M remaining in their LTIR pool with Landeskog and Tucker Poolman still on the shelf, so they’ll still need to clear some significant salary if Landeskog and his $7M cap hit are cleared to return.
This article first appeared on Pro Hockey Rumors and was syndicated with permission.
