Joe Sakic wouldn’t be doing his job if he didn’t at least make a call, right?

“I had a couple teams say to me they wondered if Colorado took a shot at Connor Hellebuyck,” NHL insider Elliotte Friedman said on the “32 Thoughts” podcast.

Hellebuyck, the best goaltender in the NHL, hasn’t explicitly asked for a trade out of Winnipeg. But by all accounts, he was on the trade market this summer.

If Sakic did take a shot at Hellebuyck, he’d just be doing his job in investigating every avenue to improve his team. The odds of the Avalanche landing Hellebuyck are low. If a package involving the fourth overall pick in the draft wasn’t good enough for Winnipeg, it’s hard to imagine anything the Avalanche enticing the Jets to move the best goalie in the world inside the division.

Barring a miracle move, the Avalanche will enter the season with the same goaltending duo that helped Colorado allow 25 fewer goals than every other team in the NHL. Beyond the NHL, the Avalanche have some exciting options if one of their goaltenders goes down due to injury. Even without a move for a star goaltender, they’ll be entering the 2026-27 campaign with as much depth in net as they’ve had in years.

For as good as Scott Wedgewood was last season, it’s clear the organization wants Mackenzie Blackwood to be the No. 1 next year. They gave up a lot to acquire Blackwood and they’re paying him to be the starter. He showed he could do it the year prior and they want that to happen again. The first step in that plan coming to fruition requires Blackwood to arrive to training camp healthy, which was not the case last season.

“(Blackwood) had a tough start last year (with) injuries,” Sakic said. “It’s hard for goaltenders to miss all the training camp, basically and get back and try and get in a rhythm. He’s 100%. He was 100% down the stretch. He’s got a whole summer to get ready and focus, and, like all our guys, everybody’s going to be healthy going into the season. We don’t have to worry about nagging injuries.”

It wasn’t that Blackwood was bad last season. It’s that Wedgwood was so good (and consistent) that Jared Bednar couldn’t justify fully handing the reigns over to the 29-year-old goalie. Since arriving in Colorado, Wedgewood’s numbers have been stellar. He’s popular in the locker room and gets along well with Blackwood, which is why there was never animosity between the two when things shook out the way they did in the postseason.

If things work out the way the organization would like next season, Blackwood would get the majority of the starts. The days of goaltenders starting 65-70 games during the regular season are gone. While Wedgewood might not start 43 games like he did last year, he won’t see his workload chopped in half. You need two goaltenders to make it through a full NHL season, which is why the Avalanche are happy with their duo.

Sometimes you need more than two goalies. If that’s the case, the Avalanche are equipped.

Former seventh-round pick Trent Miner is a grinder. He started in the ECHL, worked his way up to earn the net in the AHL for the Eagles and, last season, got his biggest taste of NHL action to date. He put up a .925 save percentage in the AHL playoffs, taking the Eagles to within one game of a Calder Cup Final appearance. There’s a small fear the Avalanche could lose him on waivers during training camp, but that’s highly unlikely as most teams don’t want to carry more than two goalies in-season.

Under most circumstances, the Eagles’ net would belong only to Miner next season. That will not be the case.

“Our goaltending depth has gotten better with Nabokov coming over, for sure,” Sakic said.

It’s been a long time since the Avalanche were as excited about a goaltending prospect as they are for Ilya Nabokov. He’s their No. 1 prospect, selected early in the second round in 2024 and is set to join Miner in Loveland next season. It was a bit of a down season for Nabokov in the KHL, as his numbers dipped and his starting job slipped away from him. That hasn’t tempered Colorado’s excitement about him.

While he’s slightly undersized at 6-foot-1, his combination of speed, athleticism and compete in net could remind Avalanche fans of Semyon Varlamov. His ability to move side-to-side means he’s never truly out of a play. His KHL pedigree includes winning Rookie of the Year and being named playoff MVP in 2024 when he led Metallurg to a championship. There will likely be a slight adjustment period necessary as he gets used to the differences between the KHL and hockey in North America, including a smaller rink, but there’s a reason why the organization is so excited about his arrival stateside.

Nabokov will not be the only Russian goaltender getting used to life in North America. The Avalanche also signed 22-year-old Nikita Novosyolov, who impressed at development camp. With Nabokov and Miner manning the net in Loveland, Novosyolov is likely to spend a good chunk of time with Colorado’s new ECHL affiliate in New Mexico.

Two proven NHLers and three youngsters competing for the net in the minor leagues have the Avalanche feeling good about their goaltending situation. A far cry from where they were just two years ago.

What I’m hearing

• Offer sheets rarely work, but general managers shouldn’t stop trying. Finding young centers like Leo Carlsson is extremely difficult, so you might as well shoot your shot when you get the chance. Even if the Flyers didn’t get the player, they did put the Anaheim Ducks in a cap bind, as they have less than $10 million to sign 40-goal scorer Cutter Gauthier. “Pat (Verbeek) has intelligently left enough cap space to give us the ability to retain Leo,” the Ducks owner said. Sure, he did. But he didn’t want to pay him that much and now they might have to dump a good player for space because of it.
• The Carlsson situation is more evidence that if you believe in a young player, it’s always wise to lock them up as quickly as you can to avoid a situation like this. You can bet the San Jose Sharks won’t be risking this same situation playing out next summer with Macklin Celebrini. They’ll be backing up the Brinks truck to his house in the coming weeks.

What I’m seeing

• The move to Colorado probably hurt Nick Blankenburg’s free agent case. He’s still on the open market, which might not have been the case had he stayed in Nashville and kept playing regularly. He has switched agents, which is usually a sign the player isn’t happy with how things have played out.
• Chicago made the interesting decision to get aggressive to try and speed up their rebuild this summer by getting Bowen Byram, but none of that will matter if Connor Bedard can’t stay healthy. A second major shoulder injury before the age of 21 isn’t good.

What I’m thinking

• Speaking of the goaltending situation two years ago, the Kappa Kahkonen era must be among the strangest I’ve covered in my time on the beat. Claimed after the embarrassing opening night performance by Alexandar Georgiev and Justus Annunen in Vegas, Kahkonen was stuck in Canada with visa issues. When he finally got a chance, he gave two goals in his first 4 minutes of NHL action and has not played an NHL game since.
• Cale Makar has already been seen skating in Canada this summer. If Sakic’s words weren’t enough to convince fans he’ll be healthy to start the season, maybe that information will be.