Thursday night saw a scary incident between the Seattle Kraken’s Jamie Oleksiak and Colorado Avalanche’s Artturi Lehkonen. The two collided in an awkward and vulnerable place for Colorado’s No. 62. He went crashing hard into the boards, his head basically looking like a slinky toy going into the bottom of the boards.
He needed time to be tended to while down on the ice, bloodied and dazed from the incident. He would leave the game on his feet and with assistance. He would not return to the game, and be taken to the hospital for further evaluation and precautionary reasons. Jared Bednar stated in his press conference the level of concern was “high.”
This would likely suggest Lehkonen will be out for the foreseeable future. Granted, any hit ending in such a result would likely be the case, even for one of the toughest players on the Avalanche’s roster. But, where does the team decide to go from here to fill such a big hole for a very underrated player?
The easy answer here is Riley Tufte. He will slot in nicely in the second line to replace Lehkonen on the left side. This will allow Valeri Nichushkin to move up to the top line most likely, with Jonathan Drouin coming onto the second line to replace Val or vice versa with No. 27 going onto the top line. However, with not much success up and down the lineup, Drouin will need to be key moving forward – despite he and Lehkonen having very different play styles.
However, if the Avs do not want to play Drouin like they did Thursday night, there are unfortunately not many options behind him. There is always Kurtis MacDermid, but it would be a very unpopular decision amongst the fanbase and doesn’t provide much going forward. Furthermore, in the AHL the talent pool is much smaller.
Remember Ben Meyers? Yeah, me neither. He could very likely come back to the NHL roster to play in the bottom six and move another player up the roster. But, he is recovering from injury so is still some time away from making a comeback. Furthermore, there is Ondrej Pavel who can come back for his second NHL appearance and perhaps longer. Jason Polin looked to be an early contender to make the regular-season roster at the start of training camp, now could be a good time to bring him in as well to test him out.
Some other names to mention include Oskar Olausson, who is second on the Colorado Eagles when it comes to scoring. There is also Joel Kiviranta, however, he is not currently signed to an NHL contract and would need to get that done first before playing with the Avalanche. Finally, you can’t mention Jean-Luc Foudy, but he is also still out injured with the Eagles. Hence, the options are slim-picking behind Tufte and Meyers – which one of the two will likely get a shot at being in the Avs roster for a large chunk of time.
Regardless of what happens with the Avalanche’s roster moving forward, Lehkonen will certainly be a key piece missing to the puzzle. Hopefully, he returns sooner rather than later and those who will step up in his spot do so in a productive way as we enter the heart of the season.