Avalanche finalize 23 man roster

After a long offseason, training camp and nervous hours as the roster deadline approached, the Colorado Avalanche at last announced their official 23 man roster for the beginning of the 2017-18 season.

As anticipated, the previously waived trio of Duncan Siemens, David Wasofsky, and Gabriel Bourque were finally assigned to San Antonio after spending a few extra days in Denver for practice. Also as expected, Sergei Boikov and AJ Greer were placed on non-roster IR. Greer has participaed in some portions of practices with the team in a non-contact sweater the last couple of days so he should clear and get sent down to San Antonio sooner than later.

Those moves alone should have finalized the roster at 23 but the Avalanche couldn’t resist making a waiver claim selecting the big left shot defenseman Patrik Nemeth from the Dallas Stars. This meant someone else had to get cut and in what might be the biggest surprise of camp, Anton Lindholm was the final casualty and sent to San Antonio. Lindholm seemed to be a coach favorite but missed time for a minor injury and a bit of an uneven outing in preseason should have indicated he was on the bubble more than was believed.

Even without Lindholm, the youth movement survives as all of Tyson Jost, JT Compher, Alex Kerfoot, Chris Bigras and Andrei Mironov all made the roster and should stick around for the year.

The fun begins at 5pm mountain time on Thursday, October 5th against the NY Rangers at Madison Square Garden.