Centennial, CO — The Colorado Avalanche have officially dropped the puck on the 2026-27 season. Day one of training camp featured two groups with the usual approach, but with a few interesting wrinkles. Let’s get into it!
Most were relatively surprised to see young Beckett Hamilton on a line with Gabe Landeskog and Nazem Kadri. Hamilton spent much of the warm-up chatting with Gabe Landeskog before the drills got underway. His time in the first
session showed he needs to develop his skating ability a bit, but he was positionally sound for most of the work.
Obviously Hamilton won’t be sticking around in the NHL this season, but by participating in camp and with his group, he’s gaining valuable experience. Chatting with one of the NHL’s longest-tenured captains and taking that back to Red Deer, where he’s a captain himself, seems like a pretty sweet deal.
MacKenzie Blackwood got an on-time start on the fresh slate Bednar spoke of. Blackwood seemed calm in the crease but appeared to be working to get the timing back, mostly in odd-man-rush scenarios. The side-to-side movement and puck tracking were already there.
When asked how he feels coming into camp, Blackwood said he felt quite “unfulfilled” about last season and was looking forward to getting back at it with a clean bill of health.
It was nice to see Nathan MacKinnon and Artturi Lehkonen combine on an excellently executed two-on-one where MacKinnon sent a cross-ice pass over to Lehky, who smoothly beat Blackwood glove side. It will also be interesting to see what additional chemistry (if any) the line of Lehky, MacKinnon, and Necas develops as they gain more experience as linemates. Those three, plus Gabe Landeskog and Nazem Kadri, stuck around for a moment after the first session to work on one-timers, with Blackwood getting reps attempting to keep their efforts from tickling the twine.
Group two got underway, and the first thing that popped up was Ilya Nabokov, who did well early on, including a great side-to-side save on Brock Nelson.
All in all, it was a solid start for the Avalanche, who seem to have turned the page on last season and look healthy and ready to go, outside of Cale Makar, who hit the ice first in a red sweater.
The Avalanche will get back after it tomorrow for day two of camp and we will be on the lookout for updates in the meantime! Sounds like Cale’s injured status shouldn’t last long.
