It was less than a month ago when new Aves GM Bryce Shuck had finished purging the roster of every single player, except goalie Phil Grubauer. Then, on May 27, the team dealt their first next year, which officially signalled there was no reason to tank this year, and the focus of the organization changed immediately.

"We decided that we didn't want to do a traditional slow rebuild, it's been done to death, what we wanted was something that our fans could buy into, and that would start building the organization for the long haul. We completely said we will not move pick 17, because think we can get a franchise player there. Outside of that, we decided that we would utilize some of the draft capital we've built, and rely on my ability to find late round gems to help stock the cupboard. The result is, we have our goaltending and our defense done, although we'd like another top defensive dman for the back pairing, moving Svedberg to the spare."

The team also has picks 17-33-75-77 in the first three rounds, and then 3 picks in each of rounds five, six and seven. It's been widely publicized that they would move pick 33 to fall back in the draft a bit and add a few extra selections. But with 13 picks left right now, they should be able to aptly fill the prospect shelves.

So what does the team have right now? Well, in net with Tuuka Rask and Phil Grubauer, the team is very happy with it's tandem, and at a cap hit of 7.35m between the pipes this season (and less next), the position is very stable. We expect the team to add at least 1, if not 2 goalies in the draft as well.

On defense, the team is thrilled with the makeup of the blueline. Duncan Keith is the undisputable #1. And after that, the team feels like it has three number 2 dmen with Dion Phaneuf, Mattias Ekholm and Niklas Kronwall all on board. Personal favorite Klas Dahlbeck will be on the 3rd pairing with a dman TBD, which would slide Victor Svedberg down to the #7 spot, and relegated to relief duty in case of an injury. The total cap hit this season for the defense right now is at 20.1305 million.

Up front, it isn't pretty. There's conceivable 4 guys who could be in the opening day roster, as the team concedes how hard it will be to sign so many players (hence why they've been filling roles via trade). John Mitchell is written in pen as the third line center, while it looks like the team has a competant 4th line in PE Bellemare, Alex Chiasson and Matt Halischuk (though Halischuk will ideally be a spare). These four likely players come in at a cap hit of 4.56 million.

So in total, with 12 of the projected 23 roster spots filled, the team has a cap hit of 27.046m, leaving 44.35m to be spent on the remaining 11. Which projects out to a little over 4 million per player left to be signed. And while signing 11 guys in that range isn't practical, you can see that the team has a bunch of cap space, and a little over 55m in the bank. Clearly the Avalanche will be looking offense in FA, and in the trade discussions they have going forward, now we just have to wait and see who they target, and who puts on the burgandy sweater come fall.