The Colorado Avalanche have made two trades in the last two weeks, both in hopes of improving their goaltending. First, they acquired Scott Wedgewood from the Nashville Predators, then they traded away Alexander Georgiev to the San Jose Sharks in exchange for Mackenzie Blackwood.
On Wednesday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, Frank Seravalli and Tyler Yaremchuk are joined by Jesse Montano, who covers the Avalanche for Guerilla Sports, to discuss Colorado’s recent trades in the crease and if it’s enough to help them make a deep playoff run this spring.
Tyler Yaremchuk: The Avs have completely overhauled their goaltending in the matter of a couple of weeks, and I’ll just start with your opinion on this: do you like this set of moves? Does this give them Stanley Cup-caliber goaltending? Or was this more of a panic move?
Jesse Montano: When you look at the full body of work, I actually really like it. Look, they had to make a move. Everyone was watching what was going on in net, they had a league-worst save percentage, the advanced metrics said the team was playing relatively well, maybe not to the level we’ve come to expect, but they couldn’t get a stop.
Chris MacFarland had to go out and do something. The Scott Wedgewood deal is a really nice one in terms of locker room fit; I know he’s a backup goalie, but he really seems to have breathed some life into this team, with the right mentality and being vocal in the room.
As for the MacKenzie Blackwood deal, I think he’s still a little bit unproven, and during his time in New Jersey, when the team started to ramp up, he crumbled a little bit. There’s a question mark around whether he can handle coming to a Stanley Cup contender and being the guy that the Avs are looking to carry them to that place.
You can watch the full segment and the rest of the episode here…
