There will be a lot of changes upcoming in this annual series.
Tomorrow we will begin our annual tradition of ranking and counting down all Colorado Avalanche organizational players who are 25 years of age or younger as of September 1st, 2025. There are 26 eligible players to list, more on that later, and therefore we will profile one Honorable Mention tomorrow to kick things off. Next week the road from #25 to #1 will begin with five players highlighted each week for five weeks until we reach the top Avalanche player under 25.
There was an incredible amount of turnover from our 2024 list including six of the top 10, which might lead to a few surprises on the 2025 ranking. Many of these players were traded away over the last year and a couple others did not receive a qualifying offer or contract from Colorado. Just to specify who will not be appearing on the upcoming list, we must say goodbye to:
#1 Calum Ritchie
#3 Justus Annunen
#4 Nikolai Kovalenko
#7 Erik Brännström
#8 Jean-Luc Foudy
#10 Ondrej Pavel
#12 William Zellers
#T-21 Kevin Mandolese
#25 Maros Jedlicka
First of all, it might be a surprise to see Maros Jedlicka named among the other players who have departed the organization. He has signed a one-year AHL deal with the Colorado Eagles for 2025-26 and will still be around but for rights purposes those expired on June 1st, therefore any other NHL club can sign him at any time. If he’s not Colorado Avalanche property he’s not technically part of the organization, and therefore isn’t eligible for this list.
The same can be said for defenseman Hank Kempf who in a similar situation will have his NHL rights to the Avalanche expire on August 15th. He has also signed a one-year deal with the Colorado Eagles but technically will not be property of the Avalanche at the conclusion of these rankings and is not eligible for this list. The question will surely come up, so here is the explanation on why these two were excluded as we do not rank AHL-only players.
No fan vote this year to streamline the process but there will be a new feature for our readers to provide your feedback, so look forward to that! We are very excited to get to our largest project and annual summer content. Before we know it training camp will be just around the corner, too!
