Colorado Avalanche Trim Roster, Lose Players to Injury

The Colorado Avalanche have played two preseason games thus far and have already now trimmed their roster down to 34 players.

After the Burgundy vs. White game, recapped at The Avalanche Guild, the first round of players were reassigned.

Those players included Mike Brennan and Zach Cohen (who were both sent back to the Lake Erie Monsters of the AHL), Gabriel Beaupre, Dillon Donnelly, Troy Rutkowski and Stephen Silas were all reassigned to their major junior affiliates and goalie Sami Aittokallio was sent back to his Finnish Elite League team.

The second round of cuts came just before the second preseason game against the St. Louis Blues and included Calvin Pickard, Garret Meurs, Evan Brophy and Justin Mercier.

After the preseason loss to the St. Louis Blues last night, the Avalanche have now trimmed their roster down to 34 players.

This latest round of cuts included Joel Chouinard, David Liffiton, Greg Mauldin, David Van der Gulik, Luke Walker and Duncan Siemens.

To this point, there really hasn't been any big surprises about who has been reassigned from the big roster. The interesting cuts should start coming as we get closer and closer to the regular season.

Something that will make the last couple rounds of cuts much more interesting is the fact that Brandon Yip and Jan Hejda both suffered injuries in the last Avalanche preseason game, which is going to cause them to miss opening night.

If you've been following any of my previous posts about Avalanche training camp, then it should come as no surprise to you that I don't believe the injury to Brandon Yip is going to change the opening-night lineup for the Colorado Avalanche at all.

Yip played a pretty horrendous season last year after a pretty impressive rookie campaign. Not only did his production drop off sharply, but Yip started hurting his team in many different ways.

He was irresponsible defensively, made bad passes, seemed to just turn and shoot wide every time and took terrible penalties.

His performance in camp has been lackluster as well, following along the same pattern with which he ended the previous season, so it shouldn't be too much of a surprise that many people following the team don't see Yip making the squad this year.

Hejda is where the serious troubles begin since I am personally quite afraid that either Matt Hunwick or Kyle Cumiskey will be used to fill Hejda's spot.

Neither of those two would be likely to pair up with Erik Johnson, but my feelings on both of these guys are that their mere presence on the ice is a negative for the team.

Neither Hunwick nor Cumiskey seem to have any regard for the fact that they are supposed to play defense.

Hunwick seems afraid of any and all physical contact and panics whenever he is pressured by a member of the opposite team, and Cumiskey jumps to join the rush and pinches in all the time, completely abandoning his defensive partner.

Yes, both of these guys are fast, but that is about it.

My hope is that they will give one of the younger guys a shot to come in and get some quality NHL experience.

Bot Stefan Elliott and Tyson Barrie have performed very well in camp and have earned the right to show that they deserve a spot over Hunwick or Cumiskey.

The Avalanche have a lot of work to do before the start of the regular season, and the injuries they have suffered of late won't make things any easier.

The last days of the preseason should lead to some interesting decisions by the staff.